When heavy snow and freezing cold blanketed the University of Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Ind., in late January, two civil engineering and architecture majors saw the adverse conditions as an opportunity.
They decided to build a Gothic style chapel of snow and ice that put the lessons learned in the classroom to the test. Once completed, the chapel drew about 2,500 students to a candlelit Mass on Feb. 2 in sub-freezing temperatures with the structure as a serene backdrop.
From the start, Wes Buonerba, who studies architecture, and Martin Soros, a civil engineer, treated the project as more than just a snow sculpture. Drawing directly from their academic background, they designed it as a simplified masonry building, modeled after Gothic churches that rely almost entirely on compression rather than steel or concrete reinforcement.
“It’s essentially a masonry structure,” Buonerba said. “If you have a perfect arch, all your masonry pieces are in compression, and that’s very stable. That’s why churches were [historically] built like this”.
The chapel is organized around four main rib arches, which are the primary structural elements that support the vault between them, transferring the weight of the ice down to the floor. Between the ribs, Buonerba and Soros added infill walls, small Roman-style arches for windows and circular openings reminiscent of rosettes, all carved from blocks of ice.
Inside, the chapel, called St. Olaf’s, is approximately 15 to 20 feet long, about 5 feet wide, and 6½ feet high. Rising above it is a slender spire that weighs about 50 pounds and reaches about 15 to 20 feet in the air.
Learn to improvise
Making the bows was a challenge for the two, who also recruited up to 10 other student volunteers to help when time allowed.
“We had a saw to cut the ice blocks at an angle, to chamfer the edges to act more like an awl and a bow,” Buonerba said. “A dowel is simply an arch or block of stone that has been cut and slightly beveled to fit the profile of the arch. The keystone was the central dowel that locks the arch in place.”
To create the building blocks, students used recycling bins as molds, each with alternating layers of snow and water, compacted by hand and with a boot. The process, Soros said, was a lot like mixing concrete.
“It’s very analogous to the water-to-cement ratio when making concrete,” he said. “If you put too much snow on it, the block breaks. If you put too much water on it, it gets really heavy.”
The student builders adjusted the density of the ice blocks based on where they would be used. Heavier, denser blocks were placed lower in the walls, while lighter blocks were used at a higher level, especially for the keys above the arches. The approach reduced the outside forces and eliminated the need for an extensive buttress.
To reinforce the blocks internally, the builders used a long-handled metal ice scraper to drill vertical holes through the packed snow before pouring water into it. Once frozen, the resulting icicles acted as reinforcing bars.
“That was like a rebar,” Soros said. “You have a solid ice core in the middle.”
Temporary formwork held the arches in place while they froze, and the two improvised to find elements to fit the task.
“We used anything we could get our hands on,” Buonerba said. “I mean basement buckets, trash cans, car hoods and bunk ladders. It was anything we could use to make this thing.”
The hood of the car, which was supported by two separate ladders at the base to counteract gravity, was used while the keystone was placed.
“As soon as we got the key, it was pretty much self-sustaining,” Soros said.
Additional small transverse arches and thin walls of ice between the main ribs helped to lock the structure into a rigid system, reducing the risk of twisting or collapse if someone touched it. At one point during construction, Buonerba stood in one of the main arches, while Soros stood in a smaller window arch, and they were thrilled as they both held their weight.
The water source for the project was the showers in his bedroom.
Between classes, Buonerba and Soros were on site almost constantly, putting in about 60 hours each.
The chapel quickly became a campus attraction, attracting the attention of curious students, passers-by, volunteers and the national media. The students decided to ask the university to hold a Mass at the site.
Photo by Michael Caterina/University of Notre Dame
Extracurricular classes
The project offered lessons beyond structural mechanics. For Buonerba, it reinforced his interest in sacred architecture and practical construction. For Soros, whose interest in civil engineering grew out of volunteering on projects in South America and seeing the effects of inadequate infrastructure, the chapel reflected the satisfaction he feels in building something tangible to benefit a community.
“It might seem like we were just kids playing in the snow,” Soros said, “but it was really applying what we learned: basic physics, basic engineering.”
Soros volunteered last year through NDSEED, a civil engineering student club at Notre Dame that designs and builds a walkway each year. As design director, last year he worked on the set of structural calculations and full drawings, spending a month and a half in Papa Chacra, southern Bolivia, building the bridge alongside the local community.
After graduation, Soros plans to go to Argentina to work at La Nazerena, a community center in Buenos Aires that serves children and families suffering from poverty.
Buonerba still has another year of study at Notre Dame in the five-year architecture program.
Regarding the chapel project, Soros said to make a striking structure “you don’t need anything impressive or crazy ornate. We were just using what God gave us: the snow that fell and the water from the showers on the first floor. [of their dorm.]”
Luis Fargier Galbadon, associate professor of practice in civil engineering and architecture, praised how the students took lessons in the classroom to create a functional structure.
“They applied the same principles that the Romans used to design churches and that engineers use today to design bridges,” he said. “The key to the structure’s stability is its arch shape. By carefully placing the ice blocks in a series of arches, a structure is formed that can support its own weight under compression.”
He cited courses such as statics, build break perfect (engineering), introduction to structural engineering, and design study (architecture) as introducing concepts useful in designing and building the structure.
“I think it’s remarkable,” added Brian Smith, a teaching professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences and the school of architecture. “It’s both playful and visually beautiful. They created something that brought our community together, which is really the ultimate purpose of architecture and engineering.”
With the work done, students now enjoy looking out their classroom windows to see classmates and others on campus visiting the chapel, but neither is sentimental about the structure’s inevitable end.
“It served its purpose,” Buonerba said. “We have to celebrate mass with 2,500 students. It brought people together, it gave a lot of joy and now it will melt and return to earth.”
