Assembly Hall Research Paper

Construction of the Concrete Roof of the Assembly Hall The University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign Assembly Hall has been the home of the Illini men’s basketball team for over half a century and has been one of the greatest engineering and architectural feats on campus ever since its creation over half a century ago. Beginning on May 25, 1959, construction of the Assembly Hall was carried out by structural engineers Othmar Ammann and Charles Whitney, general contractor Felmley-Dickerson Co., and architect Max Abramovitz, taking almost four years of construction before its completion on May 3, 1963. The Assembly Hall was an engineering wonder when it was first constructed, as it was the first ever concrete dome arena built and remained to be until the construction of the Astrodome in Houston, Texas two years later. Weighing over 4000 tons from only the roof, the concrete dome of the Assembly Hall spans at a 400 feet diameter, 128 feet tall, and built with a folded plate design in about 3.5 inches in thickness. Despite the dome’s massive size and large weight, the dome was self-supported, and when it was constructed, it was only …show more content…
Construction first started with excavating a foundation for the entire building, removing over 60, 000 cubic yards of dirt, digging in about 15 feet underground to lay the hard, gray concrete to form a ring. This strong foundation would set up not only the scaffolding for the workers, but also carry the weight of the buttresses used primarily to hold the concrete dome to be built on top. Each buttress is reinforced-concrete, about 3.5 feet thick, and 16 feet wide with a 109 feet radius and would support the construction of the dome later on. After the construction of the buttresses, the falsework for the concrete dome to lay on and harden was built, which finally allowed for the actual construction of the concrete