The hidden world of valiant ideas

Teach and learn

Frei Otto has a unique attitude to teaching architecture. It is difficult to teach, and maybe only its basic principles can be taught. But design cannot be taught at all, the only possible approach is an empirical one. "I don't design, I search," says Frei Otto.

Teachers are not judges, but propagate their own knowledge, point out the road to new horizons and learn with the students in previously unexplored fields. This philosophy led Frei Otto to teach as a visiting professor at a whole host of institutions: at the Washington University in St. Louis in 1958, at Ulm College of Design in 1959/1960, at Yale University in 1960, at the University of California in Berkeley, at the MIT and at Harvard University in 1962, and in Stuttgart as an Honorary Professor from 1964 onwards and as a Full Professor from 1976.