Word: paraboloids
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Thin sheets of saddle-shaped concrete typify Mr. Candela's architecture; a geometrician would describe them as sections of a hyperbolic paraboloid. Their most common application is in roofs for large buildings, since an inch-and-a half thick slab shaped in this way requires only one support for every 2500 square feet, far fewer than a flat surface would require...
...there are many different curved surfaces which an architect might wish to use in a building, and no single quality of the hyperbolic paraboloid is unique. One might naturally wonder why this surface should be any better than some other of a slightly different but equally pleasing shape...
...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...