Frei Otto

“My architectural drive was to design new types of buildings to help poor people, especially following natural disasters and catastrophes... I will use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity.”

“Why should we build very large spaces when they are not necessary? We can design halls spanning several kilometres and covering a whole city, but we have to ask, what does it really make? What does society really need?”

“My hope is that light, flexible architecture might bring about a new and open society.”

“Everything man is doing in architecture is to try to go against nature. Of course we have to understand nature to know how far we have to go against nature. The secret, I think, of the future is not doing too much. All architects have the tendency to do too much.”

“Most architects think in drawings, or did think in drawings; today, they think on the computer monitor. I always tried to think three dimensionally. The interior eye of the brain should be not flat but three dimensional so that everything is an object in space. We are not living in a two-dimensional world.”

“I have only one dream. It is the oldest of humanity, of man, in time. It is paradise. I would like to give paradise to everyone.”

“Buildings are 'humane' only when they promote peaceful human co-existence.”

“My architecture is the architecture of survival.”

“We have big, big problems - flooding, earthquake, and many foolish things which now people are doing - I mean, these self-made catastrophes. We are able to give to every man on the street the possibilities to help himself. And to fight for this was one of my duties.”

“I have never been satisfied with a piece of work I have been actively involved in, and would never want to be.”