11/8/2023 0 Comments Felix candela factory![]() Thin-shell structures were built to withstand earthquakes and are still in use today, taking full advantage of the light and conditions in the cool climates of Caracas and Mexico City as well as the hot and humid climates of Maracaibo and Guatemala City. ![]() ![]() The models and drawings describe in detail Candela’s favorite buildings: Los Manantiales Restaurant, the Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca, the Bacardí Rum Factory, and the Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. The exhibition which was on view at the Wallach Art Gallery is centered on a collection of drawings and photographs that Candela donated to Columbia’s Avery Library and on material from the Félix and Dorothy Candela archive at Princeton University. In Venezuela, his company built new thin-shell structures in Maracaibo and Caracas for projects such as the Volkswagen factory and the club Playa Azul, working with the architects Dirk Bornhorst and Pedro Neuberger. In the late 1950s, Candela lectured widely throughout the Americas and opened branches of his construction company in Venezuela, managed by Mexican architect Guillermo Shelley, and in Guatemala. In 1951, he designed and built the Pabellón de Rayos Cósmicos in Mexico City, the first structure made of thin-shell reinforced concrete in the form of a hyperbolic parabola. The success of the construction company Candela founded in 1950, Cubiertas Ala, or “winged roofs,” was based on his economical solutions for large spans using hyperbolic-paraboloid umbrella structures made of “thin shell” reinforced concrete for warehouses and market buildings. His studies at Madrid’s Superior Technical School of Architecture included engineering and the mathematics of statics and strength of materials, and this expertise became essential to his career as an architect-builder. In 1939, Felix Candela, condemned to prison in absentia by Franco’s government, sought refuge in Mexico. The artistic and intellectual culture of all the Americas was irrevocably changed by the immigration of artists, architects, and intellectuals sent into exile by the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Schermerhorn Hall, Morningside Campus, Columbia University
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