The United Claims air force academy chapel (Recommended Web page) (USAFA) by SOM, finished in 1962, may be the unique feature of the Cadet Region at the United States Air Force Academy north of Colorado Springs. It was made by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill of Chicago. Construction was achieved by Robert E. McKee, Inc., of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Actually controversial in their style, the Air Force Academy Chapel has become a common and a respectable exemplory case of modernist architecture.

The Air Force Academy Chapel is oriented to a north-south area on the southeast place of the degree of the Judge of Honor. It is successfully divided from the Judge of Honor by way of a broad slam, different area treatments and dissimilar gardening to the west. At an elevation of 6500 feet on the east of the Difficult Mountains, the 3,000 acre Academy also contains housing for 8,000 persons, a source center, a clinic, an airfield and an academic complicated rising up the slope of the site.

The program is split on three levels due to the slope, with the Administration Creating, the Social Center and the Air Force Academy Chapel on the uppermost level. These areas are applied by both cadets and guests, with which the wonderful peaks of the Chapel rising towards the atmosphere, attracts greater than a million a year. The design includes a tubular metal figure of 100 similar tetrahedrons. Each tetrahedron is 75′-0″ long, weighs five loads, and is closed with obvious metal panels. They are made up of six-inch pipes with four-inch secondary cross-braces, that have been stated in Mo and delivered to the website by rail. Each tetrahedron is spaced a foot aside, which creates holes in the construction which are filled with one-inch thick colored glass developed in Chartres, France.

At the chapel level, the tetrahedrons involving the spires are filled up with a mosaic of shaded glass in an aluminum frame. The structure rises 150′-0″ from joint to peak, has an overall period of 280′-0″, and is 84′-0″ large from joint to hinge. The south-facing top act features a broad marble staircase with material railings capped by aluminum handrails and leads up to a one story landing. At the landing is a band of gold anodized metal doors. Over the gates is really a glass wall. The triangular north facade consists of a glass layer wall in a metal frame.