Felix Candela

This past week we attended a lecture on the works of Felix Candela and how his use of technology has helped to create these sculptural beauties. The professors at the MIT lecture were very interesting and made his works open my eyes at least to different methods we can derive building ideas from. Candela uses these saddle like structures to create buildings with a thin layer of concrete but still very elegant and functional. When we think of concrete designs we think of these massive blocks kind of sitting in space. Candela used a method where he could create these shapes off a grid and using straight lines. I found in amazing how he took this very grid like rigid thing and created a flowing structure even though it is completely comprised of straight elements. I think that Candela proposes a great way to look differently at how we design and how by understanding the weight and stresses on a building could allow for these interesting new shapes to be created. He becomes a great influenence on the discovery of pushing certain materials we may never have thought to be able to use in certain ways to a limit.