Félix Candela

In just two decades, end of 40´s to end of 60´s, Félix Candela gave to the mexican architecture an international precence.

Félix Candela Outeriño was born on January 27th of 1910 n Madrid. Félix wasn´t interested in one particular mayor. Due to an advise of a friend, Candela decided to study architecture, as he could deicided to study something else.

Studies of architecture in Madrid requires pevious knowledge of exact sciences. In his first year at the Madrid School of Architecture, Candela depeloped a great fondness for descriptive geometry that he started to teach private lessons . In his thrird year, he atudied with Luis Vegas, material strength professor.But unlike of an average student of architecture,Candela didn´t have intellectual or aesthetic efforts. The thing that he asked him self was how to calculate a structure in order to warn its breakdown. Aulthough he never feel atracted to pure mathematis, his visual intelligence and his descriptive geometric and trigonometry talent helped to caught the attention of Luis Vegas who gave him the honorary title of Luis Vegas´ helper. Candela was a spotsman and won many competitions.

After his graduation in 1935, Candela opened a little study and office with Eduardo Robles and Ramírez Dampierre, they gave private lessons and drew for local architects. Candela started to have work calculating stell and concrete structures. In 1936, he applied for a scholarship given each year by the "Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando"(San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts), introducing an essay named "La influencia de las Nuevas Tendencias en las Técnicas de Concreto Armado sobre la Forma Arquitectónica" ( The influence of the new tendencies in the reinforced concrete techniques upon the architectonic shape). He decided to go to Germany, armed with his presentation letters for the famous specialists in shell structures: Dischinger and Frinsterwalder. The train ticket Candela had was to travel on july the 18th of 1936,due to the alarming news of the military insurrection he stayded with his baggage in Madrid. Candela refers to this event as an example of talent "being in the right place and in the rihgt time although I didn´t get the beneficts of the germany professors´ wise theaching , I learned some of the lessons that revolution and civil war left on me were most usefull to me".