Three Architects Share Norton Lecture Series

Three internationally known architects will give the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures for the year 1961-62. Felix Candela of Mexico will open the annual lectureship on the arts and literature with a talk on "The Paradox of Structuralism," Thursday, Nov. 16.

Sharing the Norton Professorship of Poetry this year with Candela will be R. Buckminster Fuller '17 of the United States and Pier Luigi Nervi of Italy.

The lectureship for the selection combing shared because of selection committee has been able to find a distinguished practicing architect who can afford to take a leave of absence from his profession for the full academics year. According to Perry G. E. Miller, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature and chairman of the committee, the University has gone beyond the financial laminations of the North Fund to attract three prominent architects to the University.

Candela, professor at the national School of Architecture in Mexico City, will lecture in November and December and reside in Leverett House for the two months. In his later lectures, the architect will discuss "Comments on the Collaboration Between Architects and Engineers" and "The Creative Process and the Expressiveness of Inner Space."

All three lectures are open to the public without charge and will be held in Lowell Lecture Hall at 2 p.m., Nov. 16, Nov. 30, and Dec. 14.

Fuller, whose space frame pavilion of 1800 wooden dowels was constructed in the Leverett House courtyard in the Spring of 1969, will lecture in February and March; Nervi, professor at the University of Rome, will speak in April and May.

President of Geodesics, Inc., and President and Chairman of the board of Synergetics, Inc, Fuller lectured at the University in 1960 also. Fuller, Nervi, and Candela are known for the enclosure of column-free space.

Candela, a native of Spain who studied at the University of Madrid, has designed and constructed a number of dramatic buildings in Mexico with thin concrete roofs in the form of hyperbolic paraboloids, umbrellas, folded slabs, elliptical domes, and undulating curves. His works include the cosmic ray pavilion of Mexico's University City and a number of churches, warehouses, and restaurants.

Last year critic Eric Bentley held the Norton Professorship, which is held annually by a representative of one of the arts.