![]() But they failed to realize either the artistic possibilities, or the economic ones." "Before then, some French engineers had experimented with the surface briefly (during the 1930's) and even built a few structures using it. "I first became interested in the hyperbolic paraboloid about ten years ago," Mr. And where the geometrician can draw straight lines, the carpenter can nail planks. Candela asserts, "and this is difficult to explain." Perhaps the easiest way to understand the principle is to remember that at any point on a saddle a straight line may be drawn which does not leave the surface, as it would, for example, with a sphere. The great advantage of the hyperbolic paraboloid is that, because of a rather devious characteristic of the surface, a carpenter building the form does not have to bend his wood. I have only ever done three or four of them." "Suppose you tried something like a dome-the mathematics is simple enough, but to build the form you must twist the wood in a very difficult manner. "This is a very useful property, to say the least," Mr. ![]() And no curve satisfying the mathematical requirements lends itself so simply to the straight line geometry of the carpenter who must build a mold out of flat pieces of wood to form curved concrete surfaces. The answer lies in the fact that only a very few of the many abstract curves available can be analyzed with sufficient mathematical ease to permit an architect to calculate stress factors at a given point. One might naturally wonder why this surface should be any better than some other of a slightly different but equally pleasing shape. This is one reason why snail shells are curled, or why it is safer to design automobiles with curved pieces of steel."īut there are many different curved surfaces which an architect might wish to use in a building, and no single quality of the hyperbolic paraboloid is unique. Candela explains, "no matter what type, are always stronger. Their most common application is in roofs for large buildings, since an inch-and-a half thick slab shaped in this way requires only one support for every 2500 square feet, far fewer than a flat surface would require. Candela's architecture a geometrician would describe them as sections of a hyperbolic paraboloid. Thin sheets of saddle-shaped concrete typify Mr. ![]() Candela's genius has not been solely in what amounts to the "sculpture" of aesthetically pleasing structures, however the architectural concept he has developed over the past ten years now makes possible the construction of these buildings at costs in many cases lower than those of more conventional projects. This winter's speaker is architect Felix Candela, who entered the profession on the theory that it "sounded as good as any other" and is now one of the most skillful designers of thin-slab concrete structures in the hemisphere. The Norton lecturer for any given year could be a man from any of a veritable potpourri of fields which the University considers to belong among music, the arts, or literature. ![]()
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