Phase 2 [P2]: Constructing a case study archive- Process

The high life textile factory

It was build in 1958 by Felix Candela a designer and builder and one of the visionaries of shell construction. It is located in the federal district of Mexico City, but now in these days the building had have a make-over, and therefore changed from its originally form. The originally textile factory were made of bricks, columns and glass, but only seen from the outside. The really exiting thing about the factory was the inside. Inside the factory re-enforced self-supporting concrete umbrella roof elements, is placed in a way, which makes the space seems like multiple sculptures. Glass tiles for bringing the daylight into the building, is used by piecing the roof. Now at days these tiles has been replaced by concrete due to the technical problem of weather conditions and overheat. This was Candela’s first and only try of piercing the walls with skylight as glass brick. As a part of the roof element and the loadbearing element a column is placed underneath to lead the loads to the foundation, which is an inverted parabola. The outside walls therefore only serves as external walls or cladding, and the bricks and glass becomes the membrane of the factory.  

The Palazzo del Larvo

Palazzo del Lavoro is a large rectangular hall of 22,500 m2

It Was build for the Turin exhibition in 1961 by Pier Luigi Nervi, an Italian engineer and master builder.


The building is now a technical school, but still intact from its original system.

‘’It is made of concrete and steel and divided into sixteen structurally steel roofed

modul, each module of 40 meters per side, and supported by 25 meters high

Umbrella concrete column, and end with a steel beam with a diameter of 38 meter.

Skylights obtained by the deviation of each module guarantee natural light, combined

With the glass facades.

The buildings cladding or external walls is

Made of glass and wrapped round the perimeter of the buildings vertical mullions’’.

— Dennis Sharp. Twentieth Century Architecture: a Visual History. p245.