Designed in the 1950s and completed over a decade, the United States Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs, Colorado, marked a watershed moment in American architecture. Built at the peak of the high-stakes Cold War era, the campus was arguably the most expensive federal project in American history.
Listed as a National Historic Landmark District, the Air Force Academy campus is still one of the most advanced fusions of technology, education, art, and architecture that the country has ever seen. At its heart, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Walter Netsch Jr. designed an aluminum skinned chapel pointing straight up to the sky and the heavens beyond it.
Upon opening in 1963, the Cadet Chapel’s bold expression of lightness and form soon became a global symbol of America’s vision and technological promise. Unusual for most religious buildings, the chapel was designed as a non-denominational facility with worship spaces for multiple religious beliefs. Its soaring presence served as a daily reminder for cadets of the American ethos, and their mission to protect its freedoms of religion, speech, and assembly.
Like many modern icons, the chapel’s envelope has leaked for years. Over the decades, accelerating water and microclimatic effects threatened permanent damage to structural systems, stained glass, wood pews, and even the chapel’s two iconic historic organs.
Modernist Renewal
The $158-million, four-year project remedies several original design and construction shortcomings that led to the building’s deterioration. One of the biggest, of course, is water infiltration. Walter Netsch originally designed a complex network of rain gutters and a flashing system beneath the exterior aluminum cladding. But congressional debates and subsequent cost value engineering led to the substitution of the gutter system with extensive caulking between the exterior panels.
In 2015, the Air Force Civil Engineering Center selected an AECOM team led by Steve Robinson, AIA from AECOM’s Indianapolis office, and Sean Reish, PE, from their office in Colorado Springs, to restore the iconic building to its former glory. Included in the broader team are Bruce Kaskel and Bryan Rouse of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates Inc. for envelope repair, and, for technical preservation, Mary Katherine Lanzillotta, FAIA of Hartman-Cox Architects.
JE Dunn is the lead contractor. To meet federal historic preservation requirements they enlisted Michael Bjornberg, FAIA, from LEO A DALY’S Minneapolis office as their Historic Treatment Specialist.
Now in its second year, the chapel repair and restoration is probably the most complex modernist preservation project ever attempted in the United States.