Models, Media, and Methods:

This exhibition, curated by Georg Vrachliotis, opens the archive of celebrated German architect Frei Otto (1925–2015), on the 60th anniversary of his guest professorship at the Yale School of Architecture. Frei Otto’s way of thinking was distinguished by experimentation. His research manifested an “operative aesthetics” oscillating between the precision of scientific tools and artistic imagination, material culture, and media technology. His techniques of modeling, drawing, measuring, and evaluation formed the basis of a creative experimental culture embodied in the Institute for Lightweight Structure and its publications, which furthered architecture research as interdisciplinary and innovative knowledge production as well as served as the starting point for a collective discourse on the future of society.

The School of Architecture spring lecture series is supported in part by the Timothy Egan Lenahan Memorial Fund, the J. Irwin Miller Endowment, the David W. Roth and Robert H. Symonds Memorial Lecture Fund, the Gordon H. Smith Lectureship in Practical Architecture Fund, the Robert A. M. Stern Family Foundation for Advancement of Architectural Culture, and the George Morris Woodruff, Class of 1857, Memorial Lecture in Architecture Fund. "Beyond the Visible: Space, Place, and Power in Mental Health" is supported in part by the J. Irwin Miller Endowment. The Yale School of Architecture’s exhibition program is supported in part by the Fred Koetter Exhibitions Fund, the James Wilder Green Dean’s Resource Fund, the Kibel Foundation Fund, the Nitkin Family Dean’s Discretionary Fund in Architecture, the Pickard Chilton Dean’s Resource Fund, the Paul Rudolph Lectureship Fund, the Dean Robert A.M. Stern Fund, and the School of Architecture Exhibitions Fund.