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Book Launch: "Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago: Rise and Fall of Experimentations in Concrete," edited by Alexander Eisenschmidt

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Book Launch: “Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago: Rise and Fall of Experimentations in Concrete,” edited by Alexander Eisenschmidt
Thursday, November 21, 5:30pm
RSVP required
Graham Foundation

4 West Burton Place
Chicago, US

Join us for the presentation and book launch of “Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago: Rise and Fall of Experimentations in Concrete” (Actar, 2024) at the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. 

Alexander Eisenschmidt will present the publication, and contributors Kathryn E. O’Rourke, Robert Bruegmann, Geoff Goldberg, and Jonathan Miller will discuss their contributions.

Félix Candela’s captivating structures in Mexico and across the globe made him one of the most important and iconic architects of the twentieth century, and yet we know very little about his work in the United States and his life in Chicago during the 1970s. Understanding this transitional period, however, enables us to see his innovations in a new light and to reevaluate the contexts of his work. “Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago” links analyses of his celebrated structures with the specific societal, economic, urban, and material conditions that first facilitated his work in Mexico, then prompted his departure and eventually complicated his practice in the US. The book, therefore, also adds to our understanding of architecture’s transnational exchanges while further exposing its complicated and often troubled relationship with labor, capital, and politics.

The book includes contributions by Alexander Eisenschmidt, Juan Ignacio del Cueto, Nader Tehrani, Elisa María Teresa Drago Quaglia, Kathryn O’Rourke, Jonathan Miller, George F. Flaherty, Stanley Tigerman, Geoff Goldberg, William Baker, Bob Bruegmann, Stuart Cohen, Ero Aggelopoulou-Amiridis, and Kenneth Schroeder, in addition to translations, interviews, and republications by Félix Candela, Reyner Banham, Ester McCoy, Alvin Boyarsky, and Carl W. Condit (in the order of appearance).

The manuscript for the book was awarded a Graham Foundation Publication Grant, a Creative Activity Award from the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research, and the Faculty Scholarship Support Grant at the University of Illinois Chicago. The initial research for this project was sponsored by UIC’s Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research.

A reception and book signing will follow the presentation. A limited number of copies of “Félix Candela from Mexico City to Chicago” will be available for purchase during the event.

The event is organized by MAS Context, hosted and sponsored by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, with the support of the UIC School of Architecture.

The book will also be launched in Mexico City at the Museo Experimental El Eco. Elisa María Teresa Drago Quaglia, Juan Ignacio del Cueto, and special guest Antonia Candela will discuss their research, moderated by Pablo Landa. The event is held in collaboration with the UNAM Facultad de Arquitectura and the Museo Experimental El Eco. 

Museo Experimental El Eco
01.26—12pm
Sullivan 43, Col. San Rafael
Mexico City, Mexico