Félix Candela’s works in Mexico, the majority of which were executed between 1952 and 1968, provide some of the finest examples of functionality fused with plastic expression that exist in that nation to date. His forms are extremely reductive and simple, and his approach is clearly seen in works such as his ultrathin shells, particularly the hypar shell (1.5 centimeters) of the Cosmic Rays Pavilion (1952) at the new campus of the National Autonomous University in Mexico City and in the vaults of the Mexico City Stock Exchange (1955).

Candela’s genius in devising new methods of calculating shell forms is illustrated by a variety of roof constructions, such as the simple umbrella, and short and long vaults. These structures attest to his technical expertise and his fluency in geometry as well as his sense of poetry, as seen in what are widely regarded as his free-edged masterpieces, Las Manantiales Restaurant (1958), where the structure, consisting of an octagonal groined vault composed of four intersecting hypars, appears, lotus-like, to float on the waters at Xochimilco, and La Jacaranda Night Club, designed in collaboration with Juan Sordo Madaleno (1957), an innovative shell derived from the intersection of three hypars, a form in complete harmony with the surrounding shoreline.

Candela arrived in Mexico City in 1939, part of the diaspora of Spanish intellectuals, architects, artists, and other professionals who were fleeing a country wracked by civil war. He encountered a vital nation emerging from a decade of revolution and another of reconstruction. Mexican architects and structural engineers were being called on to envision and construct innovative, multifunction structures on the city’s unstable subsoil. Candela flourished in this environment; his work in the design and construction of prismatic slab shells of the Hidalgo, Convent, and Monte Alpas schools (1953) are examples of his concern for sound structural design and economy, as is his later work in designing the Zaragoza and Candelaria Metro Stations (1967). His work in residential construction is similarly marked by dedication to simplicity, whether in the execution of single-family homes (Romero residence, 1952) or apartment houses.

His construction firm, Cubiertas ALA, begun in 1950 in partnership with his brother Antonio and sister Julia, participated in Mexico’s rapid industrialization in the postwar years, as it completed over 800 factories and warehouses in the 1950s and 1960s. Of particular significance among these works were those shells constructed for Bacardi and Company: the Bacardi Distillery (1955) and Bacardi Bottling Plant (1960), the former including a large, thin handkerchief dome over the fermenting tanks derived from a sphere of 24 m radius. These works, along with the Ciba Laboratories (1953), Aceros de Monterrey factory (1955), Lederle Laboratories (1955), and the High Life Textile Factory (1955), yield evidence of the considerable creative energies and resources dedicated to industrialization at that time, as well as attesting to Candela’s growing fluency in the development of shell forms.

Throughout his career Candela stressed the limited nature of architecture. Unlike other architects and engineers practicing in postrevolutionary Mexico, such as Ricardo Legorreta, Alvaro Aburto, Enrique del Moral, and others, Candela did not believe that architecture could rectify complex social problems. As his works progressed from experimental funicular vaults to cylindrical shells and various umbrellas to the free-edge hypar, and in collaboration with prominent architects such as Enrique del Mora and Mario Pani, he continued to emphasize efficiency and economy. His final work in Mexico, the Palacio de Deportes for the 1968 Olympic Games, manifests his talents in structural mechanics and design.

Yet his work cannot be seen as strictly utilitarian. In his design of the Church of the Virgen de la Medalla Milagrosa (1953), he employed hyperbolic paraboloids to yield a concrete roof of only 4 centimeters’ thickness, a sign of his technical genius. The resulting interior, however, indicates much more: the resulting internal space evokes the solemnity and mystery of Gothic architecture, a dramatic play of light and shadow that envelops and transports the worshiper to a different plane.

PATRICE OLSEN

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.1 (A-F).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

27 January 1910 Born Madrid, Spain;

Studied architecture at the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura in Madrid;

1935 graduated and began professional practice ;

1936 Received a grant from the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (Spain) for study in Germany ;

1939 with the outbreak of civil war in Spain remained in Madrid, served the Republican cause in the Comandancia de Obras in Albacate, later promoted to Captain of the Engineers. Exiled to Mexico, chartered by the Society of Friends; arrived in Veracruz ;

1939–42 Worked in Chihuahua and Acapulco ;

1942–46 Formed partnership in Mexico City with another Spanish refugee, Jesús Martí ;

1953–70 Married Eladia Martin. Founded with his brother Antonio and sister Julia the construction firm Cubiertas ALA, specializing in design and construction of reinforced-concrete shell structures;

1961 Received Gold Medal of the Institute of Structural Engineers ;

1961 Auguste Perret Prize of the UIA ;

1961–62 Named Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry, Harvard University ;

1963 the Plomada de Oro from the Sociedad de Arquitectos Mexicanos ;

1969 honorary professor, Escuela Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid ;

1969–74 Jefferson Memorial Professor, University of Virginia 1966; Andrew D.White Professorat-large, Cornell University ;

1971 Emigrated to the United States ;

1971–78 Professor, Escuela Nacional de Arquitectura, UNAM , University of Illinois-Chicago ;

1974–75 William H.Wood Chair of Architecture, University of Leeds ;

1977 honorary professor, Universidad Nacional Federico Villareal, Lima ;

1978 became a naturalized citizen in the United States;

1980 the Grand Medaille d’Argent de la Recherche et de la Technique, Académic d’Architecture, Paris;

1981 the Medalla de Oro of the Consejo Superior de Colegios de Arquitectos de España, Granada ;

1985 the Premio Antonio Camuñas, Madrid ;

December 7, 1997 Died Durham, North Carolina, USA.

Banham, Reyner, “Simplified Vaulting Practice,” Architectural Record (September 1953)

Bowman, Waldo, “Umbrellas over Mexico City’s New Buildings,” Engineering News Record (May 1957)

Boyd, Robin, “Engineering of Excitement,” Architectural Review (November 1958)

Buschiazzo, Félix E., Félix Candela, Buenos Aires: Institute de Arte Americano e Investigaciones Estéticas, 1961

Campbell, Betty, “Félix Candela,” Concrete Quarterly (July-September 1959) “Candela: The Man Who Gave Concrete a Free Rein,” Concrete Quarterly (Spring 1998)

Cervera, Jaime, et al., “Felix Candela, ‘in memoriam,’” Arquitectura Viva, 58 (January-February 1998)

Cetto, Max L, Moderne Architektur in Mexiko, Stuttgart: Hatje, 1961; as Modern Architecture in Mexico, translated by D.Q. Stephenson, New York: Praeger, and London: Tiranti, 1961

Cueto Ruiz-Funes, Juan Ignacio del, “Félix Candela, el mago de los cascarones,” Arquine (Winter 1997)

Faber, Colin, Candela the Shell Builder, New York: Reinhold, and London: Architectural Press, 1963

González Gortázar, Fernando (editor), Arquitectura mexicana del siglo XX, Mexico City: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, 1994

Holmes, Burton, and Thomas Creighton, “Recent Work of Mexico’s Felix Candela: Can a Man Be Architect, Engineer, and Builder?” Progressive Architecture (February 1959)

McCoy, Esther, “Concrete Shell Forms—Félix Candela,” Arts and Architecture (May 1957)

Mereles, Louise Noelle, “A Master Builder in Mexico,” World Architecture 13 (1991)

Pinoncelly, Salvador, “La obra de Felix Candela,” Cuadernos de Arquitectura 2 (July 1961)

Poniatowska, Elena, “Candela: El salto mortal de la arquitectura,” México en la Cultura (May 1961)

Robina, Ricardo, “La iglesia,” Arquitectura (December 1961)

Seguí Buenaventura, Miguel, Félix Candela: Arquitecto (exhib. cat.), Madrid: Institute Juan de Herrera, 1994

Sharp, Dennis, “Sharp Angles: Umbrella Shells Mark a Watershed in Stevenage: Architects (1963): Felix Candela, with Yorke, Rosenberg, and Mardall,” Concrete Quarterly (Winter 1995)

Smith, Clive Bamford, Builders in the Sun: Five Mexican Architects, New York: Architectural Books, 1967

Selected Publications

“Candela dice,” Calli (México) 33 (May-June 1968)

“Cubierta prismática de hormigón en la ciudad de México,” Revista Nacional de Arquitectura (México) (March 1950)

“Design and Construction in Mexico: Shell Construction,” Industrial Building (September 1961)

“Divagaciones estructurales en torno al estilo,” Espacios 15 (May 1953)

En defensa del for malismo y ot ros escritos, Bilbao: Xarait Ediciones, 1985

“Estereoestructuras,” Espacios 17 (May 1953)

“Estructuras laminares parabólico-hiperbólicas,” Informes de la Construcción (Madrid) (December 1955)

“Hacia una nueva filosofía de las estructuras,” Cuadernos de Arquitectura (México) 2 (1961)

“The Shell as a Space Encloser,” Arts and Architecture (January 1955)

“Shell Structure Development,” Canadian Architecture (January 1967)

“Simple Concrete Shell Structures,” American Concrete Institute Journal (December 1951)

“Toward a New Structure,” Architectural Foru m (January 1956)

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