FORUM

Structural Art and the Example of Félix Candela

David P. Billington, Hon.M.ASCE The Candela Project
Gordon Y.S. Wu Prof. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton
Univ., Princeton, NJ 08544. E-mail: [email protected] The course “Structures and the Urban Environment,” taught con-
tinually since 1974 with its largest enrollment ever this year
Maria E. Moreyra Garlock, M.ASCE 共200+ students兲, centers on 14 structural engineers with the theme
Assistant Prof. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton Univ., of structures as a new art form arising with the Industrial Revo-
Princeton, NJ 08544. E-mail: [email protected] lution and parallel to but independent of its older sister art form,
architecture. Such a thesis requires a clear definition of greatness
Engineers believe 共correctly兲 that they are crucial to the nation in these engineers and especially what leads us to designate them
but usually remain anonymous technicians in the public mind. as structural artists. This argument appears in the basic text for the
This misunderstanding is based on three misconceptions that en- course The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural
gineers have, which in turn have molded the public’s perceptions Engineering 共Billington 1985兲 but it is more visually expressed
and understandings. While the deep problem is the same for each and better generalized in the most recent course text Félix Can-
major branch—civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical—we dela: Engineer, Builder, Structural Artist 共Garlock and Billington
shall focus here on our own civil engineering profession. 2008兲.
First is the misconception that engineering is applied The argument of structures as art is made visual not only in
science—that scientists discover new things and engineers take this heavily illustrated book on Candela, but also in a major ex-
hibition centered on elegant scale models built by Princeton civil
those things and apply them. While this does on occasion help, as
engineering undergraduates and graduate students who also re-
a general principle it is historically incorrect. Second is the mis-
searched and wrote chapters in the book. The exhibition was in
conception that the fundamentals of engineering are mathematics
the Princeton University Art Museum 共Oct. 11, 2008 to Feb. 22,
and science—that students must study such subjects at a high
2009兲 and the MIT Museum 共April 2 to September 27, 2009兲. The
level to then move to engineering science and finally to engineer-
exhibition has been designed to travel and we anticipate it being
ing itself. While math and science form one part of engineering
in other museums. This exhibition 共with the same title as the
education, the study of exemplary engineering ideas and works book兲 represents a sequel to The Art of Structural Design: A Swiss
are at least as essential a foundation for engineering education. Legacy, which consisted of models and photographs of bridges
Third is the misconception that elegance in structural engineering and thin-shell concrete structures designed and built by Swiss
is the province of architects, while engineers ensure that it will structural artists: Robert Maillart, Christian Menn, Heinz Isler,
stand; only architects can make it a work of art. This argument is and Othmar Ammann. The book that accompanied this Swiss ex-
contradicted by the most talented structural engineers over the hibit 共Billington 2003兲 is the third text used in the course.
past 200 years whose motivation included appearance along with The course “Structures in the Urban Environment” has two
efficiency and economy. lectures each week for 12 weeks and one precept or lab period
Each misconception is reflected in our own profession, which with 12 students in each section meeting once a week. One of the
often seems to have little interest in the recent history of engi- course objectives is a visual experience with structures as art. We
neering and therefore tends to see engineering as the work of accomplish this through three mediums: heavily illustrated text-
teams of technologists and committees of experts. In short, the books such as the one on Candela and the Swiss Legacy, lectures
neglect of history has the direct effect of dehumanizing modern abundant with photographs, and visits to the exhibitions. The lat-
engineering. There are already some structural engineering pro- ter provides a three-dimensional experience with structures that
fessors who sense that missing and critical part of engineering can only be surpassed by a visit to the structures themselves. At
education and are trying to address the misconceptions, which the exhibitions, each student is assigned a structure and using the
brings us to a most recent illustration: the present Candela project, models must explain to the rest of the section the meaning of its
which has three parts—a college course, a book, and an exhibi- form, how that designer arrived at that form, and how one can
tion. This project grows out of an introductory engineering course understand its appearance 共Fig. 1兲.
first taught at Princeton University beginning in 1974 and enroll-
ing more students than any other engineering course ever offered
at Princeton. The Master Builder and Structural Artist
Through the example of the Candela project, this article illus-
trates an effective and inspiring way to teach structural engineer- When a work of structural engineering is elegant, it is regularly
ing not only to engineers, but to anyone interested in learning described as architecture and the designer is called an architect. In
about our built environment. We use Candela’s “voice” and ex- the case of Candela, the confusion is understandable since he was
ample to 共1兲 illustrate the central ideas to such teaching, 共2兲 de- trained as an architect, but as this book and exhibition make clear,
scribe the highest achievement possible for a structural engineer he practiced as one of the greatest structural engineers of the
共becoming a structural artist兲, and 共3兲 discuss the challenges for twentieth century, and hardly at all as an architect. Our evidence
the structural engineer practitioner and academic. comes from 共1兲 his early career as an experimentalist, which pre-

JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / APRIL 2010 / 339

 Fig. 2. Félix Candela’s Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca under con-
struction, in the state of Morelos, 1958 关Courtesy of Princeton Uni-
versity Candela Archive兴

Fig. 1. Students in the course “Structures in the Urban Environment” construction plan. A work of structural art is always the product
using Félix Candela models in the art museum to discuss and study of one person’s imagination, an individual who conceives a new
the structures 关Photograph by J. Wayman Williams兴 form, visualizes its final appearance, defines it by calculations,
and develops a means of building it.

pared him to be a builder and a designer, 共2兲 his role as a builder

and designer of his best works, and 共3兲 Candela’s own words. The Engineer and Builder
By the early 1950s, as Candela was gaining local fame in
Mexico and architects were giving him contracts, he no longer Shortly after completing his degree in architecture in Madrid, the
worked as architect. He remarked at the time that “every day I Spanish Civil War broke out and in 1939 Candela was exiled to
feel less and less an ‘architect’; I am losing interest in making Mexico. Once settled, he supported himself by building. He
plans and window details and things like that” 共Faber 1963兲. He placed himself in the field and saw designs materialize. The built
identified himself more as an engineer and builder: “I must say … structures represented engineering and architecture in action, but
that although an architect by training, in practice I am a construc- they provided him almost no intellectual stimulation. He returned
tor and building contractor” 共Candela 1955兲, and one who makes to reading the publications on thin-shell analysis and design
his own engineering calculations and designs. This disassociation 共which he had begun to read as a student in Madrid兲 and then
from thinking of himself as an architect was reflected even more began to experiment with building thin-shell structures. His work
pointedly in an essay he wrote for a symposium honoring Robert was directed toward understanding the performance of thin-shell
Maillart at Princeton University in 1972. The organizers who in- concrete structures under load, but, in addition, he was gaining
vited him to speak suggested “New Architecture” as a title for his insight into the building process for such forms. He was begin-
paper. Candela began his paper and lecture saying, “The title of ning to think like a builder, making forms—not on paper out of
my lecture is ‘New Architecture’; but I cannot avoid the feeling drawings but in the field out of concrete. Thus, when he formed
that I have not too much to do with this subject. I don’t think I can his company, it was decidedly neither an architectural nor a
speak of my work as of any new architecture or even as architec- consulting-engineering firm but rather a business devoted to
ture at all” 共Candela 1973兲. Later, when Candela republished this building—he became a construction contractor. Candela then had
paper in Spanish, he renamed it “La Herencia de Maillart” 共Mail- control of the three parts of design that make one a structural
lart’s legacy兲 共Candela 1985兲. artist: he engineered his designs, he formed them to be elegant,
Modern master builders exhibit two characteristics that are and he built them. In Candela’s words:
fundamental to the best-engineered structures: the ethos of effi-
关F兴ew people realize that the only way to be an artist in
ciency and the ethic of economy. Efficiency in this sense means
this difficult specialty of building is to be your own con-
the search for forms that use a minimum of materials consistent
tractor. In countries like this 关the United States兴, where
with sound performance and assured safety; economy signifies a
the building industry has been thoroughly and irreversibly
minimum of construction costs consistent with low expense for
fragmented and the responsibility diluted among so many
maintenance. These two fundamentals imply a plan that pays at-
trades, it may be shocking to think of a contractor as an
tention to both design and construction. An engineer who designs
artist; but it is indeed the only way to have in your hands
efficiently and with a builder’s mentality is considered a master
the whole set of tools or instruments to perform the for-
builder. Such a person was Félix Candela. But he was more than
gotten art of building, to produce “works of art….” 共Can-
that; he was also a structural artist—that is, an engineer who has
dela 1973兲.
all the qualities of a master builder and possesses in addition a
strong aesthetic motivation. An engineer can be a master builder We would slightly revise Candela’s prescription for engineering
without being a structural artist, but one cannot be a structural works of art by expanding the term “be your own contractor” to
artist without being a master builder. Many master builders are include “to have a builder’s mentality.” When asked to name his
engineers who work for architects and consider the aesthetic to be favorite structures, Candela listed Miraculous Medal Church, the
the province of the architect; hence, they think of their structures Chapel at Cuernavaca 共Fig. 2兲, Restaurant Los Manantiales at
as part of architectural art. Structural artists are engineers who Xochimilco 共Fig. 3兲, and the Bacardi Rum factory 共Fig. 4兲 共Bas-
consider it their mission to create the form—the aesthetic of a terra and Valero 1998兲. These works form the core of the book
structure—as well as to conceive the technical design and the and exhibition because as a group they provide the key to Can-

340 / JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / APRIL 2010

 Fig. 5. Heinz Isler’s Sicli Company Building under construction,
Geneva 关Courtesy of Princeton University Maillart Archive兴

Fig. 3. Félix Candela’s restaurant Los Manantiales in Mexico City,

designs, they serve as models of efficiency, economy, and el-
Xochimilco, 1958 关Courtesy of Princeton University Candela Ar-
egance 共Figs. 5 and 6兲.
chive兴

The Practitioner and the Academic

dela’s genius. Omitted from his list are his first hyperbolic pa-
raboloid shell 共Cosmic Rays Laboratory兲 and the many umbrella As Candela became more famous, he also became more outspo-
shells that comprised the bulk of his work but that he seems not to ken and increasingly critical of structural engineering in the
have considered worth identifying specifically. We discuss that United States. He wrote a series of papers on design and, most
missing set separately, also with the goal of offering further in- pointedly, a powerful and colorful attack of the report “Concrete
sight into Candela’s ideas. Shell Structures: Practice and Commentary,” produced by a com-
From all these works, the same pattern emerges. Candela the mittee of the American Concrete Institute, which appeared in the
builder makes a simplified analysis to justify the engineering de- Institute’s journal in September 1964 共Tedesko et al. 1964兲.
sign and then takes the overall shape, which sometimes comes Candela’s basic statements in criticizing the report were seri-
from somewhere else, and plays with it to make it structural art. ous even though they were dressed in flowery satire and some-
This art can only arise when that play is disciplined by efficiency times approached outrage. First, Candela emphasized his
and economy. As Candela explained: profession as a contract builder—as opposed to others on the
关An兴 efficient and economical structure has not necessar- committee—which required him to always bid competitively
ily to be ugly. Beauty has no price tag and there is never without taking unnecessary risks 共the ethos of the master builder兲.
one single solution to an engineering problem. Therefore, His second statement directly attacked the “so-called scientific
it is always possible to modify the whole or the parts until approach to the design problem.” Here he repeated in more vivid
the ugliness disappears. This aversion to ugliness is quite language the muted but powerful example of Robert Maillart in
the opposite of the task of the professional artist who has his twenty-year battle with the established academic leadership at
to produce beauty as an obligation or of today’s star- his Alma mater in Zurich. This is a direct attack by Candela on
architect who has to be original at any cost in each new the emerging culture of the research university, where the internal
project” 共Candela 1973兲. “contributions” have little to do with those issues furthering better
design such as identifying what is both reasonably economical
Candela’s significant structures were all of the hyperbolic pa- and visually elegant through examples of specific structures.
raboloid 共hypar兲 form, and nearly the whole surface only 4 cm As if to confront the aesthetic issue in its most corrupt form,
共1.5 in.兲 thick. The doubly curved surface of the hypar form is Candela next called attention to the ways in which consulting
developed with two straight line generators; thus, Candela engineers were caught trying to make possible “extravagant ar-
achieved economy of construction by avoiding curved boards for chitect’s dreams.” This was an inseparable part, as Candela saw it,
his falsework in construction. While the climate in Mexico is of a society “whose whole economy is mostly based on waste.”
more moderate than that in the United States, other designers At this point, he identified himself as an individual thinker who
have built works showing that thin-shell structures fare well in
harsh environmental conditions. For example, Heinz Isler de-
signed many thin-shell concrete structures in Switzerland; typi-
cally these were about 7.5 cm 共3 in.兲 thick and, like Candela’s

Fig. 4. Félix Candela’s Bacardi Rum factory, 1960 关Courtesy of Fig. 6. Heinz Isler’s Heimberg Indoor Tennis Center under construc-
Princeton University Candela Archive兴 tion, Heimburg 关Courtesy of Princeton University Maillart Archive兴

JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / APRIL 2010 / 341

saw a confrontation emerging between similarly inclined indi- of these structures after half a century. But in addition, viewers
viduals and those who tended toward uniformity and conformity. and especially civil engineers must know about Candela’s own
His great foreboding was that the world was “becoming a dull, education, about the traditions that helped form his ideas, about
stale, and hierarchical” place where innovation was no longer the manner in which he thought about his designs and their more
possible. profound meaning. In short, Candela demands a new focus in all
Finally, the idea that thin-shell concrete structures “stem di- education, one that humanizes engineering by including studies of
rectly from a mathematical approach” 共as stated by the commit- individual structural engineers and thereby to show its essential
tee兲 is contradicted by Candela’s career and, indeed, by the separateness from science and from architecture. This does not
careers of other successful thin-shell concrete designers such as mean that future structural engineers should avoid physics or ar-
Heinz Isler, Pier Luigi Nervi, and Anton Tedesko. The direct con- chitectural history; rather, they should also study the physical
clusion from the committee is that one can design shells only performance of structures not found in nature and the new art of
“after long years of mathematical study and detailed scientific structural design, which requires a clear understanding of its es-
investigation of many, many shells.” It is clear in retrospect that sential connection between design and construction while exhib-
this strong statement of the prerequisite for designing thin shells iting the elegance characteristic of the best structural engineers in
was in large measure the reason why American structural engi- the last two centuries.
neers gave up designing such structures. They became discour-
aged by the complexity and apparent necessity for so much
mathematics in the design.
References
Candela was able to challenge the building profession, espe-
cially in the United States, because he had found the secret of a
Basterra, A. and Valero, E. 共1998兲. “La aventura Mexicana: Entrevista
true philosophy of structures through the intimate connection of
con Félix Candela 关The Mexican adventure: Interview with Félix
intellect and action—a real theory of structure and a real activity
Candela兴.” Arquitectura Viva, 58, January–February.
of building that illustrated and stimulated the theory. His is the
Billington, D. 共1985兲. The tower and the bridge: The new art of structural
first attempt to outline a full theory of structural art in structural engineering, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J.
concrete. If Robert Maillart was the greatest practitioner of that Billington, D. 共2003兲. The art of structural design: A Swiss legacy,
theory, Félix Candela was the first great engineer to carry the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, N.J.
ideas onto the international stage. Candela, F. 共1955兲. “Encuesta espacios” 共an interview with Félix Can-
dela兲, Espacios: Revista integral de arquitectura, planification, artes
plasticos 28, November–December, Mexico City.
Central Ideas to Engineering Education Candela, F. 共1973兲. “New architecture.” The Maillart Papers, D. P. Bill-
ington et al., eds., Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J., 119–
Candela’s ideas and works show three ideas essential to the edu- 126.
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fense of formalism and other essays], Xarait Ediciones, Bilbao.
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Faber, C. 共1963兲. Candela, the shell builder, Reinhold Publishing, New
conserve natural resources; the second is the ethic of engineering, York, 128.
to resist wasting money; and third, the aesthetic of engineering, to Garlock, M., and Billington, D. 共2008兲. Félix Candela: Engineer, builder,
avoid the ugly. With proper education, students will be able to see structural artist, Princeton University Art Museum and the Yale Uni-
in Candela’s great concrete works the evidence of all three: thin- versity Press.
ness of shells, imprint of straight-line form boards, and grace in Tedesko, A., et al. 共1964兲. “Concrete shell structures—Practices and com-
the refinement of form. What they also will see is the permanence mentary.” Proc., ACI Journal, 61共9兲, September, 1755–1765.

342 / JOURNAL OF STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING © ASCE / APRIL 2010

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