ITHACA, N.Y. -- Heinz Isler (pronounced "ezler"), the noted Swiss structural engineer and designer, will present a talk at Cornell University, Monday, March 11, at 6:30 p.m. at Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, Goldwin Smith Hall. The talk is free and is open to the public.

Isler is considered to be among the foremost structural artists working today. His talk, which is the Felix Candela Memorial Lecture, will concern Isler's thin-shell roof structures -- self-supporting concrete domes -- of which he has designed more than 1,000 in the past two decades, more than any other engineer. His structures, most of them in Switzerland, have been described as "harmonious, natural and inspiring."

Concrete shells depend on their conÞguration, not on their mass, for stability. Candela, who was the master of the form, derived his designs from a geometric surface called a hyperbolic paraboloid. A Spanish architect educated in Madrid, Candela settled in Mexico in 1939, and during the 1950s and 1960s he designed and saw built a number of striking concrete shells in Mexico and the United States. Candela was a Cornell A.D. White Professor-at-Large from 1969 to 1975. He died in 1997.

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