[1] The chapel is located on a 3-acre zone in the center of campus, and is set on an irregular hexagonal base, providing 477 m2 of gross floor area, including the 245 m2 nave (with 500 seats), 81 m2 chancel, and 44 m2 robing rooms.
The church itself is a tent-like conoid structure, with four warped leaves rising to 19.2 m high, establishing itself as a central landmark on campus.
The chapel was first conceived as a multi-planar, wooden structure, but the architects soon abandoned the idea of using wood due both to the humid environment and to seismic concerns.
However, unlike the Philips Pavilion and other contemporary ruled-surface buildings of the era, Luce Chapel is not a thin-shell structure.
The structural concept might be influenced by that of the Yale University Art Gallery, completed in 1953 and designed by Louis Kahn, another noted architect of the time.