The striking, thin-shelled shelter swoops like a partial sine wave, with its highest point reaching 60 feet. The same year, Candela began work on the Capilla de Palmira, or Palmira Chapel, near Cuernavaca. From afar, it resembles a concrete lotus on the water. Comprised of eight parabolic folds that meet at a central point, the structure, which still stands, can shelter 1,000 patrons. In 1958, he built Los Manantiales Restaurant near the canals of Xochimilco, a neighborhood in Mexican City. While Candela’s first commission, for the UNAM’s scientists, features two subtle hyperbolic paraboloids, he gradually introduced more drama in later buildings. He called it Cubiertas Ala, or Wing Roofs. He started experimenting with full-scale, reinforced concrete shells before setting up a company in 1949 with his siblings and Mexican architects Fernando and Raúl Fernandez Range. In Mexico, Candela focused on building his architectural career. Model for the Pavilion of Cosmic Rays (photo by the author for Hyperallergic) In 1939, when the Republicans surrendered, ending the conflict, Candela was held at a French war camp before he was sent to Mexico as an exile. Joining the Republican cause as Captain of Engineers, Candela helped restore old buildings for military use. The following year saw the start of the Spanish Civil War. Born in Madrid in 1910, he attended the city’s architectural school, where he studied early shell structures until 1935. Curator Alexander Eisenschmidt, working with the show’s lead researcher Juan Ignacio del Cueto, has paired these with documents and other archival material that highlight Candela’s time as a professor at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois (now known as the University of Illinois at Chicago), where he worked from 1971 to 1978.Ĭandela’s experience as not only an architect but also a contractor and engineer prepared him to build these massive, gravity-defying shells. Among these are the UNAM pavilion, a dramatic chapel in Cuernavaca, and Candela’s complex for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. At Gallery 400, an exhibition examines 14 of his most iconic concrete shell works through photographs, architectural models, and plans. Between 19, Candela designed about 1,500 projects, over half of which were realized.

Felixe candela restaurant