This post is dedicated to Frei Otto who passed away last week (9th March) at the age of 89. Frei Otto was an architect and structural engineer inspiring many in the profession with his radical ideas, research and work on flexible, temporary, lightweight and tensile structures in architecture. He is best know for his German pavilion at 1967 Montreal world expo and his 1972 Munich Olympic stadium.

His ideas and work are still highly relevant to contemporary architects and designers today; having heavily influenced the "high tech" architects of the 90's as well as projects such as his collaboration with Shigeru Ban for a temporary Japanese pavilion at the 2000 Hannover expo (where Otto's grid shell system is combined with Ban's recycled paper aesthetic) or more recently the proposed design for the new google HQ (designed by Thomas Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels).

It was announced before his death that he would be awarded the 2015 Pritzker architecture prize, upon receiving the news he said, "I will use whatever time is left to me to keep doing what I have been doing, which is to help humanity."