Structural art and the example of f́lix candela

David P. Billington, Hon.M.ASCE discusses that Félix Candela was an engineer who designs efficiently and with a builder's mentality and called him a master builder. David states that Candela was a structural artist who also possessed strong artistic qualities. He explains that a work of structural art is always the product of one person's imagination, an individual who conceives a new form, visualizes its final appearance, defines it by calculations, and develops a means of building it. Candela work was directed toward understanding the performance of thin-shell concrete structures under load, and explored the building process for such forms. Candela's significant structures were all of the hyperbolic paraboloid (hypar) form, and nearly the whole surface only 4 cm (1.5 in.) thick. The doubly curved surface of the hypar form was developed with two straight line generators that enabled Candela to achieve economy of construction by avoiding curved boards in construction.