'Primeval architecture is an architecture of necessity.

Nothing is there to excess, no matter whether

stone, clay, reeds or wood, animal skins or

hair are used. It is minimal. It can be very beautiful

even amidst poverty and is good in the ethical

sense.

Good architecture seems to be more important

than beautiful architecture. Beautiful architecture

is not necessarily good. Only buildings that are at

the same time ethically good and aesthetically

beautiful are worth preserving.

We have too many buildings that have become

useless and yet we still need new buildings, from

pole to pole, in the cold and in the heat.

Man's present areas of settlement are the new

ecological system in which technology is indispensable,

even in hot and cold areas.

Our age requires buildings that are lighter,

more energysaving, more mobile and more

adaptable, in brief more natural, without disregarding

the need for safety and security.

This logically leads to the further development

of light constructions, to the building of tents,

shells, awnings and air-supported membranes.

It also leads to a new mobility and changeability.

A new understanding of nature is forming under

one aspect of high performance form (also called

>classical form<), which unites aesthetic and ethical

viewpoints.

Tomorrow's architecture will again be minimal

architecture, an architecture of the self-education

and selfoptimization processes suggested by

human beings.'

(Frei Otto and Bodo Rasch in their foreword

of this book.)

In 1992 the Bavarian branch of the Deutscher

Werkbund awarded its first prize to Frei Otto, undoubtedly

the most successful and many-sided

protagonist of modern light construction, and

with it a request to nominate a meritorious person

to whom the prize could be passed on, and

to design a joint exhibition with that person. Frei

Otto chose his pupil Bodo Rasch, who had realized

Otto's theories particularly in other cultures.

Otto died on 9 March 2015; he was to be publicly

announced as the winner of the 2015 Pritzker

Prize on 23 March, but his death meant the committee

announced his award on 10 March. Otto

himself had been told earlier that he had won

the prize by the executive director of the Pritzker

Prize, Martha Thorne. He was reported to have

said: 'I have never done anything to gain this

prize. Prize winning is not the goal of my life.

I try to help poor people, but what shall I say

here
I am very happy.'