• Construction of St. Robert Bellarmine Chapel was completed in 1962, replacing the previous chapel, which was located in Schmidt Hall.
• Its roof is a freestanding hyperbolic paraboloid that is unsupported by its exterior walls.
• Horizontal beams embedded into two buttresses anchored several feet into the ground are the roof’s main support.
• These four steel beams, each 89 feet long, stretch front and back, meeting at the roof’s two apex points.
• A lattice of rebar connects the beams side to side across the roof. The rebar is what gives the roof its smoothly curving shape.
• The curve of the roof continuously changes because it’s a geometric shape created by the intersection of two parabolas—curved planes created from conical cross-sections.
• Looking at the roof from the side, its curve is convex—dipping then rising from front to back. But from the front, the underside of the roof is concave—rising in a bell curve from one buttress to the other.
• The apex of the roof at the rear of the chapel is higher than the apex over the front entrance.
• The roof, made of reinforced concrete, is only 3.5 inches thick.
• The length of the roof span from front to back is 153 feet, 3 inches; the height is 47 feet, 7 inches at the highest point—the rear.
