"Playfully" lightweight structures

Free experiments

The Institute for Lightweight Structures was always imaginative and willing to experiment. Together with his team, Frei Otto asked philosophical and technical questions: How will people live in the future? What makes good architecture? How are structures formed? Which processes influence the formative processes of all objects? How does nature build structures? What mutual interaction is there between nature and architecture?

The experiments were conducted in a playful manner but with technical precision with the aim of simulating and scientifically observing the formative processes of material objects in living and non-living nature. Nature was not a role model, but simply a means of understanding natural structures. The researchers searched for structures that were related to human life, aesthetically pleasing and preserved the environment.
The numerous experiments used materials that everyone is familiar with from their childhood: soap bubbles, sand, stones, thread, cloth, chains, plaster and plastic film. A wide range of models and testing facilities were developed and built at the Institute for Lightweight Structures: the soap film machine, the minimum path device, the rotary and tilting plate machine, and models made of plaster, chains and plastic.
In these experiments and the systematic analysis that followed, the formation processes of various minimal surfaces and lightweight constructions were studied and put into practice: tensile membrane and cable net structures, pneumatic structures and transformable structures, lattice structures and suspension structures, arches, vaults and shells.

In this way the architect and visionary Frei Otto continues to ask the questions that affect the whole of humanity and gives the answers from his own perspective.

"How must we live in the future? - We must think, research, develop, invent and venture more to allow all people to live a peaceful life in a nature which they themselves protect."