Felix Candela’s first European Project: The John Lewis Warehouse, Stevenage New Town

Abstract

Felix Candela’s hyperbolic paraboloid reinforced concrete structures - also known as hypars - were not only masterly used in his well-known religious buildings but they were also ingeniously and profusely employed to roof a vast number of industrial buildings during the Mexican industrialisation era. Candela’s inverted hypar shells prototype for industrial buildings became a trademark for a systematic and standardised construction method which crossed the Mexican borders to reach and influence the work of other architects and engineers further afield. In the United Kingdom this is exemplified by the John Lewis Warehouse (JLW) at Stevenage in which Candela worked as co-designer and consultant of the post-War architectural firm Yorke, Rosenberg and Mardall (YRM) and the engineers Clarke Nicholls and Marcel.The JLW represents a unique structure in the repertoire of Candela’s work outside Mexico for two main reasons. Firstly, it stands as Candela’s first European project and secondly it represents a structure in which ‘automatic beauty’ was achieved through economic efficiency and the use of more sophisticated construction methods than those conventionally used in Mexico. Moreover, and beyond its structural and constructional merits the JLW yields a spatial richness which transformed the ephemeral of the working day to forge spaces of mnemonic identification. Built in 1963, the JLW is an epitome of structural art amongst the industrial buildings of Britain's post-Austerity period. Candela’s first European project is analysed not only in terms of its structural and constructional merits but also in relation to its spatial poetics.