Cities estates and routing systems develop change constantly and fundamentally cannot be
planned. Claims to ownership land and building regulations planning decisions and political
interventions make it difficult for settlement structures to adapt to constantly changing
requirements to such an extent that meaningful and totally ecological use of the surface of the
earth is becoming increasingly difficult although new techniques and flexible planning models
mean that a connection could be found with the self-designing processes of urban-development
history. Plants are anchored in their location on the face of the earth animals and human
beings have mobile territory and encampments that become static with increasing density. Human
settlements are organisms but they are not hereditarily anchored in their form like corals
sponges or beehives. They often grow and shrink at the same time. Their form can almost never
be called chaotic. Typical self-formation processes lead to astonishing genetic optimization in
the course of time. Processes of change have become so rapid today that current urban-planning
theories have been overtaken. But high effectiveness of self-created in other words unplanned
settlements in terms of energy and biology is totally achievable today in »natural« town and
transport planning and leads to ecologically meaningful solutions that are also full of beauty.
The study was written in the context of special research into »natural constructions« by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and has hitherto been available only in German and as a
working paper for circulation between those involved in the research project. Frei Otto is one
of the 20th-century's most important architectural visionaries. Although at a first glance his
buildings like the German Pavilion for the 1967 World Fair in Montreal designed with Rolf
Gutbrod the roofs for the Olympic buildings in Munich designed by Günter Behnisch or the
project developed with Christoph Ingenhoven for a new main station in Stuttgart seem to be in
the tradition only of the great constructors of this century like Felix Candela or Pier Luigi
Nervi his work goes way beyond mere construction. He is a technician artist and philosopher
in one and his central concern is for a new and all-embracing link with nature in building.
