Mannheim Multihalle

Otto studied architecture in Berlin before being drafted into the Luftwaffe as a fighter pilot in the last years of World War II. It is said that he was interred in a French POW camp and, with his aviation engineering training and lack of material and an urgent need for housing, began experimenting with tents for shelter. In the 60s Frei Otto developed a theory of using well curved surfaces with opposing curvature, minimal surfaces, with equal tensions under prestress. He extended the technology from fabric to cable nets and used this formfinding method to develop some structures that surprised the architectural world. The Multihalle in Mannheim is an example of this with a doubly curved compression structure constructed out of 50mm square timber and spanning 60m.