With the design for Los Manantiales, Felix Candela’s
experimental form finding gave rise to an efficient, elegant, and
enduring work of structural art. Comprised of four intersecting hypars,
a strikingly thin roof surface creates a dramatic dining space. Built
as Candela was establishing an international reputation as the foremost
shell building, he demonstrated to the world his masterful combination
of artistry and technical virtuoso.
Architects: Felix Candela
Location: Canal Principal, San Jerónimo, Xochimilco, 16420 Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico
Architect In Charge: Felix Candela
Design Team: Colin Faber
Year: 1958
Photographs: Flickr user Emmanual Hernandez, Erik Eugenio
Martínez Parachini, Flickr user wework4her, skyscrapercity, Flickr user
VivaXochimilco, Flickr user duncan c
Los Manantiales was created as Candela’s mastery thin-shell concrete
construction was solidifying. Initially conceived for another client on
a different site, the structure found realization as a replacement for a
wooden restaurant alongside a floating gardens filled canal in the
Xochimilco area of Mexico City.
Candela’s fascination with thin-shell structures was piqued during his studies at La Escuela de Arquitectura de Madrid. An extraordinary athlete and facile student, he supplemented his formal training with a independent reading on techniques for analysis of form.
His academic career was interrupted when the Spanish Civil War
erupted, but his experiences restoring buildings for military use gave
him first hand exposure to construction techniques. Candela’s later
practice merged theoretical studies with careful consideration of
building processes.
During the war Candela was imprisoned, but given the opportunity to emigrate to Mexico as an exile. There, concrete was an increasingly popular building material that represented modernization, efficiency, and a break from the past for a people who had just gotten through their own political upheaval.
Candela began building thin shell structures not for clients but as full scale experiments. Although he constructed some cylindrical forms, Candela working intensely with hyperbolic paraboloids, or hypars. Eschewing the trend toward reliance on complex mathematics, Candela developed forms where stresses could be determined with simple equations. A form Candela called “umbrellas,” created by joining four straight edge hypars, were an efficient way to cover large spaces such as markets and warehouses. His construction of the Cosmic Rays Laboratory utilized hypars to add stiffness and minimize material thickness, and received international acclaim.
The iconic form of Los Manantiales was derived through continued
geometric investigation. Called “La Flor” (The Flower) by townspeople, a
continuous interior space is enclosed by an singular sculptural
surface. Light spills through the glass apertures that infill each
vault, highlighting the roof form.
The roof is a circular array of four curved-edge hypar saddles that
intersect at the center point, resulting in an eight-sided groined
vault. The plan is radially symmetric with a maximum diameter of 139
feet. Groins spanning 106 feet between supports. Trimmed at the
perimeter to form a canted parabolic overhang, the shell simultaneously
rises up and out at each undulation. The force paths from these
overhangs act in the opposite direction from forces along the arched
groin, reducing outward thrust.
The largest membrane forces are carried along the intersections between the forms, called the groins. This areas are thickened by creating hidden steel reinforced “V” beams. The rest of the structure has minimal reinforcing to address creep and temperature effects, but essentially works entirely in compression. The symmetrical plan and innovative use of “V” beams allows edges free of stiffening beams, revealing the radical thickness of the 4cm (1 ½”) shell.
from archdaily