The new appointment of the Observatory on Architecture of the Targetti Foundation shall be devoted to one of the greatest masters of the 20th century architecture, the eighty something year old Frei Otto who shall conduct his first world public lecture in Florence for the Foundation after recently being awarded the very coveted Imperial Praemium by the Japan Art Association (2006).

This exceptional guest shall conclude the 2006 season of the Observatory on Architecture of the Targetti Foundation. The lecture planned for November 20, thanks to the critical contribution by Pino Brugellis and Emanuele Piccardo, intends to pay homage to the great German architect whose work decisively influenced the history of modern architecture.

 

“Utopias,” Lamartine used to say “are only premature truths.” Frei Otto’s work fits in this very framework, as it is becoming particularly topical due to the new “ecological culture of the city.” The general theme of Frei Otto’s research is the definition of the highly technological macro structural typologies which are capable of creating future urban scenarios combining ethics and imagination about a better future created by the architect’s work, a future providing eco-sustainable  complete  solutions.

 

Ecology, ethics and technology are the main themes that Frei Otto addressed in his projects through the experimentation of materials and shapes resulting from studies on nature and biological elements. He urges not to imitate animals or natural forms, but rather to understand the strong analogies with them and to apply the knowledge of natural structures to technical ones.

 

His so called “lightweight structures” mainly stem from the observation that many forms nature creates spontaneously are optimal as nature expresses itself and develops its phenomena by wasting as little energy as possible. The lightweight structures in fact belong to the “natural construction” category, resulting from nature-like processes,  whose stability depends essentially on their form. Otto Frei’s choice of this kind of structures is not by chance, as by choosing so, bright  and lightweight (permanent or temporary) roofing can be created, thus hugely cutting down on materials in comparison to most classical structures and thereby immediately reducing costs.

In “Storia dell’architettura moderna,” Bruno Zevi places Frei Otto – along with Paolo Soleri and Buckminster Fuller – in the section “Utopia  and futurologists.” “Utopia is an ambiguous term”  writes Zevi “applicable in a rigorous sense perhaps only to certain set designs by Archigram Group. It is a matter of concrete hypothesis concerning a fearfully close tomorrow  urging organization in order to avoid incalculable disasters.” It is this attention to the study of the future urban design which is the base of the relationship between Otto, Soleri and Fuller.

 

The work of Otto is not the result from a single creation, rather it is the expression of a unitary design combining  his theoretical research on the idea of the city and technological experimentation on the potential of materials, as demonstrated by the study on the Antarctic city and on the inflatable pneumatic structures. Through his architecture he wants to contribute to improving people’s living conditions by building a society based on a more equitable occupation of space.

Frei Otto’s architecture stems from the observation of nomadic camps in extreme weather conditions and from his quasi obsessive experimentation on materials, whose technological and static possibilities allow him to exploit to the maximum great lightness and transparency.

Lara-Vinca Masini wrote in “L’arte del novecento,” Frei Otto may be considered the creator of a sort of organic architecture, created with a minimum effort, in order to get the maximum result. He exploits the lightness, the pliability, the resistance of plastic materials and the inflatable enclosures which he organizes in scientifically ordered structures.” Hence it can be deducted that Frei Otto  is an extraordinary experimenter whose influence on radical architecture (groups such as the British Archigram and the Florentine Ufo who borrowed the tensile and  inflatable structures from him) and on high tech architecture by Renzo Piano,  Norman Foster, Richard Rogers, who intellectually owe him quite a lot, is evident.

 

Will mankind manage to reconsider his relationship to the natural environment? How will it affect the design of the city of the future? Will this attention to ethics lead in defining new relational scenarios for the creation of a more opened and equitable city? To what extent can technology contribute to reach these goals? These issues and many others shall be discussed during the event hosting Frei Otto. A series of projects demonstrating the effectiveness of his theoretical thinking and design shall be presented such as the tensile structure for the Munich Olympic stadium  and the Antarctic city , the German pavilion and the 1967 Montreal world expo and finally the study “ “Shadow in the Desert”.

 

 

The OBSERVATORY ON ARCHITECURE of the TARGETTI FOUNDATION organizes meetings, conferences and debates in order to enquire about the most significant aspects of contemporary design, while analyzing its interrelations with sociology, town planning, art, communication, psychology and the world of technological innovation.

The most significant protagonists of the international architectural thinking and practice participated to the meetings organized during the Observatory’s first two seasons, such as Yona Friedman, Norman Foster, Peter Eisenman, Bernard Tschumi, Thom Mayne, Greg Lynn and Dennis Frenchman.

The meeting with Frei Otto was organized in cooperation with the architectural digital magazine Archphoto.it and the Istituto