These seemingly pancake-thin marvels of masonry were also possible in part because of his business practices, according to architect and UIC professor Alexander Eisenschmidt, who organized the show alongside Juan Ignacio del Cueto. Both Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava, a former student, namecheck his work as an inspiration.Ĭreations such as the 1958 Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca, a glorious swoop of masonry, took advantage of hyperbolic paraboloid geometries and his own design daring. The interior of Los Mananatiales Juan Guzmán/Archivo Fundación TelevisaĬandela’s career, including the hundreds of structures he designed in Mexico as well as a decade spent teaching in the United States, are the subject of a new exhibition, “Felix Candela’s Concrete Shells: An Engineered Architecture for Mexico and Chicago.” A collection of photos, interviews, and models on display through March 3 at Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he taught from 1971 to 1978, showcases the genius of his concrete geometry, and his lasting impact on structural engineering and architecture. His embrace of thin, curvy shells for structural design, which he called cascarones, were declared “ daring structural fantasies” by famed critic Ada Louise Huxtable. This daring concrete design was the work of Felix Candela, a Spanish-born architect, engineer, and contractor who helped revolutionize the use of concrete in the 20th century.

Nicknamed “La Flor,” Los Manantiales restaurant, a thin, concrete-shelled structure designed to resemble a floating lotus flower, escaped the disaster with just a few bruises and bends. In the aftermath, the Mexico City authorities authorized a census of historic buildings to find out what had been damaged or destroyed.Ĭlose to the epicenter of the quake in Xochimilco, a neighborhood near waterways where residents would spend lazy Sundays floating on wooden boats called “trajineras,” one structure with walls just an inch-and-a-half thick managed to survive the calamity.

During the earthquake that struck central Mexico last September, the ground buckled, hills shook, and buildings collapsed.

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