In an announcement abruptly moved up after his death, the German architect Frei Otto
on Tuesday was named the winner of the Pritzker Prize in recognition of
his airy tentlike structures and other inventive feats of engineering.
Mr.
Otto, 89, died in Germany on Monday, two weeks before he was to be
named this year’s laureate, the prize jury said. He is perhaps best
known for roof canopies designed for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich,
admired for their blend of lightness and strength.
“He
has embraced a definition of architect to include researcher, inventor,
form-finder, engineer, builder, teacher, collaborator,
environmentalist, humanist, and creator of memorable buildings and
spaces,” the jury said in its citation.
The
Pritzker is regarded as architecture’s highest honor and usually goes
to a living architect. The committee said it was the first time that a
winner had died before the announcement was made.
Mr.
Otto learned of his selection early this year when Martha Thorne, the
prize’s executive director, flew to Stuttgart to inform him of the
jury’s choice. He was blind but otherwise in good health, the panel
said. Mr. Otto was honored and surprised, according to Edward Lifson, a
spokesman for the prize.
“I’ve
never done anything to gain this prize,” Mr. Otto was quoted as saying.
“Prizewinning is not the goal of my life. I try to help poor people,
but what shall I say here — I’m very happy.”
Mr.
Otto may not have been a household name, but he was widely esteemed in
the profession. Prominent architects had quietly pushed for him to
receive the award for years.
“Time
waits for no man,” said Peter Palumbo, the Pritzker chairman, in a
statement, calling Mr. Otto’s death “a sad and striking example of this
truism.”
The
announcement was originally to be made on March 23. The architect Frank
Gehry was to award Mr. Otto the prize at a ceremony on May 15 at the
New World Center in Miami. That will proceed as scheduled, with past
Pritzker laureates speaking there about Mr. Otto’s life and work.
Mr.
Otto first became known for tent structures used as temporary pavilions
at the Federal Garden Show in Germany and other events in the 1950s.
His large-scale roofs for the 1972 Olympics stadium in Munich, designed with Günter Behnisch,
defied expectations, though the games were vastly overshadowed by the
massacre of 11 Israeli athletes there by Palestinian terrorists.
Mr.
Otto often designed in collaboration with others, collaborating with
Shigeru Ban on Japan’s pavilion for the 2000 Hannover Expo in Germany
and with Rolf Gutbrod on the West German pavilion at the Montreal Expo
of 1967.
Born
in Siegmar, outside Chemnitz in eastern Germany, Mr. Otto grew up in
Berlin. He designed glider planes as a hobby, fascinated by the
structural forces at work when thin membranes are stretched over light
frames.
During
service as a pilot in the Luftwaffe during World War II, he was
captured near Nuremberg, Germany, and spent two years as a prisoner of
war near Chartres in France, where he worked as a camp architect,
learning to build various structures with the minimal materials
available.
After
the war Mr. Otto returned to study architecture at the Technical
University of Berlin, where he earned a doctorate in civil engineering
in 1954.
In
a clear reaction to the heavy columned buildings commissioned under the
Third Reich, Mr. Otto’s work was lightweight, democratic, low-cost and
sometimes temporary.
After
a trip through the United States, where he viewed the work of Frank
Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and others, Mr.
Otto became a freelance architect in 1952, opening an office in Berlin.
He went on to found several institutions dedicated to lightweight
structures.
He
was inspired by “natural phenomena — from birds’ skulls to soap bubbles
and spiders’ webs,” the British architect Richard Rogers, a member of
the Pritzker jury and a past laureate, said in a statement prepared
before Mr. Otto’s death.
Mr.
Otto’s work has been widely recognized. In 2006, for example, he won
the 18th annual Praemium Imperiale prize for architecture, awarded by
the Japan Art Association; in 2005 he received the Royal Gold Medal for
architecture from the Royal Institute of British Architects.
“Frei
Otto is one of the great architects and engineers of the 20th century,”
Mr. Rogers said. “His work has inspired and influenced modern
architecture, as we all learn to do more with less, and to trade
monumental structures for economy, light and air.”
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