“Pneus are ugly”, Philip Johnson reportedly exclaimed when Frei Otto presented him with his pneumatic experiments. A “pneu” is an elastic surface encasing a fluid medium that can both enable growth and accommodate changing forces and stresses through its movement. The word pneu can be applied to the technical (rubber tyres) as well as the natural (biological cells).
Pneumatic structures were one of the key areas of Otto’s research into the creation of forms drawn from nature. His experiments are primarily documented in photographs that appeared in IL 12 Convertible Pneus, published in 1975, depicting entire landscapes made up of plaster models that form contours and cast shadows; wire cables, cutting into elastic surfaces and tubes, rising up and collapsing down.
The master investigator was not unaware of the sensuous aspect of pneumatic structures and published his thoughts in 1985 in the short essay Sinnliche Architektur (Sensual Architecture). The text is a call for more expressive forms in architecture which move and, when possible‚ arouse the viewer. Philip Johnson later began experimenting with pneumatics himself, to which Otto commented: “From extreme ugliness a path leads via the erotic to the aesthetic and back again”. I (Franziska Stein)
“Urpneu air fish” model (Photo: © DAM and Frei Otto)
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