Word: candela
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...Spanish-born Felix Candela of Mexico is perhaps the most unassuming architect alive. About the closest he has ever come to immodesty is to say of his shell-like concrete structures and umbrella roofs that "this is the most functional architecture there is." His adopted country enthusiastically agrees. There are more than 325 buildings in the republic that are at least structurally designed either by Candela or by authorized agents of his firm. Probably 100 more have sprung up in the rest of Latin America, as well as in the U.S. and Britain. But of all of these, none...
Nervi joints Felix Candela and R. Buckminster Fuller in sharing the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship this year. He is widely known for his innovations as a structural engineer, such as the thin precast and pre-stressed concrete shells that enclose many of his buildings...
...great advantage of the hyperbolic paraboloid is that, because of a rather devious characteristic of the surface, a carpenter building the form does not have to bend his wood. "I am not a mathematician," Mr. Candela asserts, "and this is difficult to explain." Perhaps the easiest way to understand the principle is to remember that at any point on a saddle a straight line may be drawn which does not leave the surface, as it would, for example, with a sphere. And where the geometrician can draw straight lines, the carpenter can nail planks...
...first became interested in the hyperbolic paraboloid about ten years ago," Mr. Candela says. "Before then, some French engineers had experimented with the surface briefly (during the 1930's) and even built a few structures using it. But they failed to realize either the artistic possibilities, or the economic ones...
...mention of the economic aspects of hyperbolic paraboloid design is characteristic of Mr. Candela, an essentially pragmatic man. He rarely mentions one of his work's objects-aesthetic appeal, without bringing up the other-practicality. One cannot talk with Mr. Candela for more than about ten minutes without sensing the balance between these goals: 'We can build out of shell concrete cheaper than any other material in Mexico," he will say. And two minutes later, while drawing complex curves and surfaces on the back of an envelope, "I like that...