This series contains materials related to Félix Candela's professional work as an architect, structural engineer, and master builder, both for his own company and as a technical advisor for other firms. Included are many black-and-white and color photographs, slides, negatives, and transparencies showing Candela's finished structures and works under construction, along with some architectural drawings, sketches, and designs, and a smaller quantity of maps, calculations, and project files pertaining to specific buildings. Rather than serving as traditional architectural project files, the materials in this series document the design, construction, and completed forms of many of Candela's buildings, primarily through photographs, and secondarily, through Candela's architectural drawings and specifications, which provide insight into his design process. This series includes an original run of conceptual files on specific buildings, arranged by architectural feature or theme, that contain both photographic materials and architectural drawings. Also present is a group of slides and negatives of Candela's work, along with microfilms of technical articles related to his projects, that he organized separately by medium, and additionally, a group of Candela's photographic materials, which were later arranged based on their use for research and publication in a book by Maria Garlock and David Billington, Félix Candela: Engineer, Builder, Structural Artist (Princeton University Art Museum, 2008). These divisions were preserved in order to maintain contextual evidence regarding use and original organization. Researchers looking for photographs of a specific building should note that relevant materials may therefore be present in all three subseries.

This series includes drafts, typescripts, handwritten notes, and clippings of Candela's lectures and published papers, itineraries, receipts, and correspondence related to his international travels and participation in conferences worldwide, along with drafts and clippings of his published articles and translations. These materials, which Candela filed together, pertain broadly to his role as a leader in the field of architecture and as an advocate for innovative methods of thin-shell concrete design. Beginning in the 1950s, Candela became an outspoken proponent of a new type of structural analysis that de-emphasized overly complex mathematical calculations in favor of a more thorough theoretical understanding of forms based on principles of geometry. His public lectures and writings promoted an economy of design that was not divorced from aesthetic concerns, made strong arguments against classical structural analysis, and at the same time, attracted attention and publicity to his firm, Cubiertas Ala. Materials in this series reflect Candela's regular participation in international professional conferences, meetings, and publications related to architecture and structural design, and the viewpoints he promoted. Some writings and typescripts of Candela's lectures regarding topics tangential to architecture, such as politics and urban planning, are also included.

This series includes a group of professional and personal correspondence of Félix Candela, beginning in the 1950s. Professional correspondence primarily regards Candela's participation in several professional associations and committees, his various awards and appointments, teaching and lecturing opportunities, inquiries from graduate students writing about his work, and occasionally, building projects. Correspondence is organized in two ways, following the original groupings of materials. Professional correspondence files that Candela kept by topic or correspondent retain their original folder titles when present. Both professional and personal correspondence files that Candela grouped chronologically retain that order. In addition to letters to and from his family and friends, personal correspondence also includes some letters between Dorothy Candela and others following the death of Félix Candela in 1997.

This series contains materials primarily related to Candela's personal life and activities, including appointment books, financial ledgers, address books, student notebooks, drawing portfolios, study guides, autobiographical writings with related clippings and documents, personal photographs of Candela traveling with his family, and various awards and honorary certificates he received throughout his career. Contents range from school work and black-and-white photographs from Candela's early education and athletic career in Spain to contemporary color photographs of Candela in his later years traveling in Europe and South America alongside his wife, Dorothy Candela. A complete run of appointment books spanning from 1968 until 1997 is also present, containing a great deal of information about his daily activities and interactions.

This series includes clippings and print materials related to architecture in general, as well as to Candela's own work, that he collected along with his papers as reference materials. After his exile from Spain following the Spanish Civil War, Candela never continued his formal study of architecture. Instead, during his early years in Mexico, he educated himself on the topic of thin-shell construction through independent reading and subscribing to various architectural journals and reviews, some of which he retained and are included in this series.