Félix Candela, Mexico

Founder: I Am An Architect

Felix Candela: architect, engineer, builder, experimenter, artist. In 1939 he was exiled to Mexico, where he developed experience working as an architect, an engineer, and a builder of traditional beam and column construction. During the first two years in Mexico, Candela subscribed to engineering and architectural magazines and journals, through which readings he tried to complete his education as a structural engineer. His most significant works are the Cosmic Rays Laboratory, the Los Manantiales Restaurant, the Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca, the Bacardí Rum Factory, and the Church of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. "I sometimes allow myself to fancy that progress of the structural technique could have taken place by means of the natural evolution of intuitive and experimental methods employed with such amazing success in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Perhaps such a development, …..could have led to a better use of the properties of the materials, for the problem might have been approached more openly, without the blind faith that it may be solved by mathematical procedures. The most fitting forms are not, as a general rule, easy to investigate; hence their use has been neglected in favor of less appropriate solutions that are easier to analyze." Felix Candela