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Friday 3 November 2006

Restaurant at Xochimilco - Felix Candela, 1958



Pic from 'Candela: Shell Builder,' by Colin Faber

The intersecting hyperparabaloids of Felix Candela's restaurant at Xochimilco, Mexico City. You can see from the diagram above how the structure is formed from the 'saddle' shape of the 'hypars.'

The 'hypar' structure means the seemingly complex curves can all be constructed using straight lines, as the diagram above also helps to demonstrate.

 Candela's ingenuity here means the visible 'free edges' of the concrete shell are as thin as just forty millimetres.

 RELATED: Architecture


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4 comments:

  1. Joshua Blevins Peck21 Jun 2008, 15:15:00

    Curious about the drawing or image at top of the post...doing a project w/ this kind of thing but regarding this architecture in Tulsa, Oklahoma...would love to know where you found this image or where it's from. Thanks.

    You can just leave a response on my blog's latest post if you respond.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pils23 Oct 2009, 14:00:00

    HELLO... WELL I NEED TO TALK TO YOU LOL... WELL I NEED TO ASK YOU ABOUT THAT DRAWING... ABOUT COPY RIGHT, CAUSE I NEED TO KNOW TO USE IT, MY E MAIL IS PEQUE_9070@HOTMAIL.COM TAKE CARE

    ReplyDelete
  3. Marc5 Dec 2013, 06:08:00

    Can we use this hypar drawing on our site www.docomomoquebec.uqam.ca ? Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  4. Peter Cresswell5 Dec 2013, 18:07:00

    Hi Marc, The original drawing comes from Colin Faber's book 'Candela: The Shell Builder,' which is long out of print--and which I should have acknowledged myself.

    ReplyDelete

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