I agree with this, I love it. It fits at the Academy but as others have said, it doesn’t say “church.”
But I also love the Inland Steel Building* which was an earlier building done by the same designer as the chapel, Walter Netsch.
*Few pictures do it justice and I didn’t love it until I saw it in person.
I’m guessing that you meant to put the question mark outside the quotation marks. heh.
Bring me men?
What’s odd about that? Hasn’t that ever been the case with public monuments? Just look at the various British and European cathedrals, the Roman buildings, the Acropolis, and so on back to the Egyptian pyramids and before.
I had to think about it.
There are buildings that you love at first glance. This was not one of those.
I had to think “oh, ok, airplane wings. Yeah, I can see what someone was going for. That works for the USAF, I guess.”
But I don’t love it.
To me it looks like a giant heat sink.
Given
such an extensive set of historic architectural precedents (most of which place puny Man in the shadow of God’s magnificent presence), and,
the realization that upon its completion, this monolith too, might yet again, be interpreted as demanding that one kowtow to its presence, and
especially given that it was creaated during an era of great social change and innovation (during which time iconoclasts and their output was more likely to be accepted),
it is all the more reason to be disappointed that the architect went along with the cultural/historic status quo.
It’s horrid.
It’s slightly better in person, because it’s the only thing at the Academy that doesn’t look like you can land a plane on it. Nearly every other building is an enormous flat-topped rectangle glass and steel rectangle. There’s not a building on that campus which feels remotely welcoming.
Thanks so much for all your comments.
I find the fact that there’s a fairly clear split in opinion rather reassuring. I’d have been quite concerned if there had been a unanimous or near-unanimous sentiment one way or the other.
To this point (and I do hope more people will tell what they think), there have been 6 folks who seem to hold a generally favourable impression of it, and 9 people who are clearly not enamoured of it.
As for me, I really meant it when I said that I have mixed feelings. I do appreciate its architecture (at least as much as an architectural ignoramus like myself can) and think it may well be almost perfectly suited for its role and place. If I were a Christian pilot-to-be, or Christian teacher of pilots-to-be, I imagine that I’d be plenty moved just looking at, and feel a special joy upon entering it.
BUT, as someone who’s a foreigner in many more ways than one to the USAFA and its Christian denizens, I see it as a rather cold and almost brutal monument. At the risk of Godwinizing my own thread, it looks to my eye as almost fascist in its conception and design, or at least what I imagine a fascist chapel might look like. I could go out on a limb and say that might be the look of the Luftwaffe chapel had you-know-who won (and if organized religion was still tolerated), but I won’t.
Just what I would’ve written. I’m usually not a big fan of modern architecture, but this is the right design for the right place at the right time. Two thumbs up.
We were out there last year. Had a very nice dinner with a couple of cadets with raptors on their arms, way cool we got to pet them (the raptors not the cadets. 
)
Mrsin noted that the chapel looked like a “taco” if you discounted the steps. Damned if he wasn’t right. Taco
It looks like a hangar. At the Silent Hill airport…
For some reason, it reminds me a little of the Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They don’t look alike and the setting’s different, but something about the verticalness (?) of it seems similar.
I can’t believe no one has mentioned that it looks exactly like a Cylon Resurrection Ship.
As architecture, I love it. It doesn’t look cold or unwelcoming to me, at least from the front. On the contrary, it draws me towards it. The entrance has a vaginal look to me, which isn’t unusual for cathedrals, though usually less pronounced.
It doesn’t seem humbling to me, either. Sure, to me or you it is, but not to a pilot. It says very clearly to me that nothing is closer to God than a pilot. I’m not sure that’s the message AF cadets need to learn, exactly. So not so great as a chapel.
Well, it IS the chapel at a military academy, built in the late 50s-early 60s. It would be astounding if they had gone for a design that did NOT seek to impart a sense of majesty as understood by people of the early nuke/space age. *We fly supersonic jets and launch missiles. Our place of worship evokes upward flight, speed, power and progress. Meanwhile our places of everyday residence and study evoke regimentation and discipline. * I can imagine that. So I “dig” the USAFA Cadet Chapel for being architecture of its time, not a simulation of architecture of some other time.
And yes, the Academy in general has something of what we came to think of as a “1950s institutional” look… but… IT IS institutional buildings. Military institutional buildings. From the 1950s. The AFA campus was essentially sprang full grown over a few years in the virtual middle of nowhere, with no immediate built-environment referents. The campuses in Annapolis, West Point and New London are the way they are because they evolved, as it were, “organically”, over a couple of centuries (and not all the time as academies, New London only came to host the CGA in 1915, after over a century as a post for other services). USNA in particular being at the waterfront in Annapolis had a *very * close-by urban landscape for architectural feedback. The USAF had the chance to go tabula rasa and I’m not surprised they went “modernist”; in a way it’s more honest than to just copy “how an academy is supposed to look” from the senior services.
From this site on the development of the Academy, statements of the visions for the design:
Sure, virtually nothing made in the spirit of the architectural schools of the time would look particularly pleasing to 2007 eyes, and that’s not entirely fair to that architecture. To 2007 eyes, the question would be why not have it be more in-tune with the prairie/rockies environment… well, that was not such a major a consideration in the 1950s/early 60s almost anywhere anyway; and the buildings are not supposed to be about the mountains and prairie, but about the Air Force. At best you would have gone for Saarinen/Niemeyer “futurism” and how do you justify that to the budget committee. So modernism it was.
Well, it’s a bold choice. Boldness tends to polarize.
Here in Seattle, the best recent example is the new-ish downtown library. I love it, and most of the people in my immediate circle feel the same. But there is also, in the city, a fair-sized contingent that looks at the library, wrinkles their noses, and mutters, “…the hell?”
Boldness does sometimes backfire, of course. Witness another Seattle edifice, AKA “the monstrosity.”
But for my money, I would much, much rather see architecture that takes a stand, makes a choice, and demands that one have an opinion about it, for positive or negative, than the alternative, which is generic, undistinguished styling that elicits no questions, provokes no reaction, and off of which your uncaught eye slides as if greased. (Local example.) That’s the thing about taste: A strong, specific vision will not appeal to everyone, and may alienate some viewers; but then the vision that is concerned primarily with displeasing as few as possible will of necessity please a comparable number.
Now, I don’t find the USAF Academy Chapel personally appealing. I’m not a fan of symmetrical repetition in design; it screams “conform” and “get in line” to me, a message to which I have an allergic reaction. That said, given the above, I can respect the boldness and specificity of its approach, and I think the world is a richer place for having such a building in it, even if I don’t like it overmuch.
Thank you for such an erudite contribution - much obliged.
“Monstosity”, a good moniker. To me it looks like something that either melted or which was the product of an abortion. So let’s say a ‘melted abortion’ :eek:
It’s certainly a striking looking building. I’ll admit I don’t think of aircraft when I see it, I felt it evoked images of aircraft hangars, which is something slightly different.
But so many cathedrals, especially medieval ones, were intended to dwarf those coming into them. The Nave of Notre Dame, for example, nearly quashes the supplicant entering through the main doors with the simple physical comparisons. I’m surprised to see a building so modern evoking that sort of response from you, but if there’s any culture where that would be considered a benefit from a chapel/cathedral, it would be the military, I think.
My immediate reaction was “That’s pretty sweet”, since I generally like artistic/unusual architecture, but I can definitely understand where your ambivalence comes from. It looks sort of imperialistic and not very homey at all. I wouldn’t be very attracted to it (for that reason, plus it’s a church).
