Frei Otto: Building with Nature

Published to mark the architect’s centennial, this richly illustrated book investigates Frei Otto’s groundbreaking achievements in creating lightweight architectural structures and pioneering sustainable design practices, reframed through environmental contexts and discourses. Featuring essays by international scholars and a thematic overview of his most important works with archival material, the book investigates Otto’s mastery of tensile structures, his innovative application of biological principles to architecture, and his trailblazing use of unconventional materials and construction techniques. Otto’s forward-thinking approach proposed energy-efficient and environmentally conscious architecture long before these ideas became mainstream, and his teaching interwove many of the strands of his later projects and research. With plans and photographs from the saai archive for architecture and civil engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, which highlight the influence of natural concepts in his work, and with in-depth interviews demonstrating the timeliness of Otto’s designs, this monograph serves as a new framing of a an architect who provided a blueprint for creating sustainable, functional, and harmonious buildings.