Exhibition Catalog

February 20, 2020 – May 2, 2020

Models, Media, and Methods: Frei Otto’s Architectural Research

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Frei Otto experimental model
Image: saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology
Frei Otto Portrait
Image: saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology
Tanzbrunnen by Frei Otto
Image: saai | Archive for Architecture and Civil Engineering, Karlsruhe Institute for Technology
This exhibition, curated by Georg Vrachliotis, opens the archive of celebrated German architect Frei Otto (1925-2015), on the 60th anniversary of his guest professorship at the Yale School of Architecture. Frei Otto’s way of thinking was distinguished by experimentation. His research manifested an “operative aesthetics” oscillating between the precision of scientific tools and artistic imagination, material culture, and media technology. His techniques of modeling, drawing, measuring, and evaluation formed the basis of a creative experimental culture embodied in the Institute for Lightweight Structure and its publications, which furthered architecture research as interdisciplinary and innovative knowledge production as well as served as the starting point for a collective discourse on the future of society.

Exhibition Catalog

Cover of Models, Media, and Methods exhibition catalog

Exhibition credits

Curator: Georg Vrachliotis  Project Assistance: Senay Memet  Exhibition Design: Lukas Bessai, Florian Bengert, Marcel Schaaf Project Management: Claudia Iordache  Restoration of Archival Material: Isa Strunk  Reproduction of Archival Material: Christoph Engel, Bernd Seeland  Graphic Design: Floyd E. Schulz, WTHM—Büro für Gestaltung Berlin  Video Editor: Iden Sungyoung Kim  Lending Institutions: Südwestdeutches Archiv für Architektur and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology  Director of Exhibitions: Andrew Benner  Exhibitions Coordinator: Alison Walsh  Fabrication: Eric Sparks, True Line Productions  YSoA Exhibition Graphics: Erin Kim  Catalog: Nina Rappaport, David Reinfurt and Bryce Wilner  Installation team: Ryan Cyr, Alyse Guild, Jaime Kriksciun, Lauren McNulty, Matthew Shopshire, Charlie Taylor 

The Yale School of Architecture’s exhibition program is supported in part by the Fred Koetter Exhibitions Fund, the James Wilder Green Dean’s Resource Fund, the Kibel Foundation Fund, the Nitkin Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in Architecture, the Pickard Chilton Dean’s Resource Fund, the Paul Rudolph Lectureship Fund, the Dean Robert A.M. Stern Fund, and the School of Architecture Exhibitions Fund.