Reinforced-concrete hyperbolic paraboloid shell
Cáscara de paraboloide hiperbólico de hormigón armado
- Date
- 1951 · confidence high
- Place
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Credited to
- Félix Candela
- Field
- Tools
What it is
Candela used doubly curved ruled surfaces whose geometry allows formwork of straight boards and concrete roofs only 1.5 cm thick. With the UNAM Cosmic Ray Pavilion and the Xochimilco restaurant (1958) he spread the technique.
Candela was a Spanish architect exiled in Mexico; the hyperbolic paraboloid had been used earlier by Laffaille and others, but Candela made it an economical building method.
What it led to
- shell roofs in Latin America and the US
- umbrellas and free-edge vaults
- thin-shell engineering with low-skilled labour