Rainer Graefe – three pioneers of high-modern construction

What drives people to push the boundaries of construction?

In 1969, Rainer Graefe arrived in Stuttgart as a young theatre scholar – and met Frei Otto at the Institute for Lightweight Structures. This encounter proved to be a turning point: it laid the foundations for a new perspective on architecture, civil engineering and the ‘history of construction’.

In this interview, Graefe looks back and explains how his research gradually led him to three visionary pioneers of ‘building at the limits’: Antoni Gaudí, Vladimir G. Shukhov and Frei Otto. Three figures whose innovative designs have had a lasting impact on high modernist architecture.

The film features excerpts from an interview conducted by Werner Lorenz with Rajner Graefe on 8 April 2024; it was produced as part of the DFG Priority Programme “Cultural Heritage Construction” (SPP 2255). At its heart lies the question: How can we better understand, appropriately evaluate and preserve the constructions of High Modernism (c. 1880–1980) for the future?

The full interview is published in Volume 1 of the SPP 2255 series, Building at the Limit – Traditions and Transformations of a high-modernist model (Cultural Heritage in Construction, Vol. 1): https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783035628616/html