emt! C1 TO Pioneer in light weight tensile and membrane structures A German research engineer and architect, Frei ‘Otto, has created a revolution in the 20” century. He is a leading authority on lightweight tensile and membrane structures, and has pioneered advances in structural mathematics and civil engineering. ‘STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DIGEST | JANUARY-MARCH 2010Unique Bars Frei Otto was born in Siegmar, Saxiny in 1925. Asa son and grandson of sculptors, he was initiated in stonemason’s craft but spent most of his free hours inventing and building model planes. From 1931 to 1943, he attended Schadow School in Berlin asa trainee mason He served as a fighter pilot in World War II and later trained others at the Technical University of Berlin from 1948 to 1950. While flying glider planes, he had his first opportunity to observe the behaviour of thin membranes stretched over light frames and exposed to aerodynamic forces. Later in France, during the world war, he started experimenting with tents for shelter, due to the need of urgent housing, whereby applying his knowledge of aerodynamics to structures. In 1952, he established a studio at Berlin, He earned doctorate on tensioned constructions in 1954, In 1957, he founded the Development Center for Lightweight Construction in Berlin and seven years later, in 1964, he transferred the center's activities to the Institute for Lightweight Structures in Stuttgart where he headed the institute till his retirement as university professor. Otto believed in modern technology and from the beginning, envisioned structures of extreme lightness as well as extreme strength, which would make the optimum use of new materials such as thin cables of high strength steel or thin membranes of synthetic fabrics. His systematic research on lightweight and adaptable construction, his understanding of the building architecture and his concer on’how toachieve more with Jess material and effort! was to lead him towards designing some outstanding lightweight tensioned structures. method of working Frei Otto, from the beginning, was always eager to create new structural forms, In fact, he was the first to examine the link between form and structure, He continuously studied research and developments in other fields and with those applications he developed his own forms. While working on a problem, he would first develop his ideas on paper. He often created hundreds of sketches in a few days and like wise he has created some tens of thousands of drawings and sketches in his life time. He used to develop a “soap film model” (see Fig 1) or a real membrane model in which forms generate themselves in order to observe and analyze the process of the load transfer and the deformations of the complex tensile shapes which he has ed. However, as the scale of his projects increased, he pioneered a Soap Film model computer-based procedure for determining their shape and behaviors. ‘STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DIGEST | JANUARY-MARCH 2010ASAE MERE MenTs Major Works and achievements Ouco exhibited a special gift for creating lightweight tentlike structures, His saddle- shaped cable-net music pavilion at the Federal Garden Exposition in Kassel brought him his first significant attention, 4 ) ed ~ - Pntceaeted aati Other major works include the West German Pavilion at the Montreal Expo in 1967 (Fig, 3), It had the maximum length of 130 meters and maximum width of 105 m st covered area of about 8,000 square meters having mast heights of abo 1410 38 meters. prea tee Werte Become ete He has also designed the roof of the 1972 Munich Olympic Arena (Fig 4), where the entire roof was made out of steel cable structure filled with transparent polycarbonate tiles. He also developed a roofing system for a Japanese Pavilion at Expo 2000 with a roof structure made entirely out of recycled paper. ‘STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DIGEST | JANUARY-MARCH 2010Otto has also experimented with pneumatic = membranes stabilized and maintained by means of air and gas pressure, Structures built with these membranes are used for oil- ee storage tanks, grain silos, and greenhouses, He has won several awards including = 1974'Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture = 1996/7 Wolf Prize in Architecture - 2006 RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Royal Gold Medal Today Frei Otto's vision is as much ali realize his first tent constructions. it was fifty years ago when he began to Apart of being considered an en, himself as a natural scientist neer, architect and inventor, Otto likes to think of nd_ experimental physicist. His works offer an inexhaustible source of inspiration and reflection, Designing more than 200 projects, he feels proud telling: "I have built little, But Ihave built many castles in the ait L always try to think three dimensionally. The interior eye of the brain should not be flat but three dimensional so that everything is an object in space. We are not living in a two dimensional world. ‘STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING DIGEST | JANUARY MARCH 2010