‘Félix Candela’s Concrete Shells’ at Gallery 400, Chicago

Gallery 400, Chicago, is featuring the works of Spanish-Mexican architect Félix Candela, in the exhibition “Félix Candela's Concrete Shells: An Engineered Architecture for México and Chicago.” The architect, one of the prominent figures in the 20th century architecture, pioneered the use of reinforced concrete. His iconic buildings — categorized as ‘cascarones’ or ‘shell structures’ — the Palace of Sports for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, the Pavilion of Cosmic Rays at UNAM in Mexico City, Los Manantiales Restaurant in Xochimilco, and the Chapel Lomas de Cuernavaca in Cuernavaca.The exhibition is a collaborative efoort of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Curated by the architectural theorist and designer Alexander Eisenschmidt, the exhibition features the architectural models, plans, and photographs of the architect’s concrete shells, provoding a peek into Candela’s innovative use of hyperbolic paraboloid geometry, noted ArchDaily.