There has been a long relationship between ice architecture and north american building techniques. The most recognizable is the Inuit ‘igloo’, a shelter made of cut blocks of ice or packed snow, stacked in a spiral pattern to form a half-sphere. However, ice and snow hade been used in a myriad of ways, from fantastical ice palaces, to ice-composite ships!
Ice palaces are large, fantastical buildings built from ice and snow. The first ice palace is said to have emerged in Russia, as the cruel setting for the wedding night of a newlywed couple who had angered the Queen. More recent ice palaces have had much less sinister connotations. Many palaces were built in the late 1800’s as the centerpieces of popular North American winter festivals, where they provided the setting for many of the festival’s events. A modern version of the ice palaces is the ice hotel of northern Quebec. The smooth walls of the vaulted rooms are cast snow, while immense blocks of ice covered with thick blankets serve as furniture.
While building with ice seems a natural building material for a northern climate, the military has adapted ice to many other uses as well. One such application is the use of packed snow and ice as a paving material for roads in the far north, where traditional road materials would be inappropriate and expensive. A more unique experiment was ‘Project Habbakuk’, proposed in 1942. The war had stripped the country of ship-building materials, so, thanks to its inherent buoyancy, the government turned to experimentation with ice. A military ship was proposed, using a material called ‘pykrete’ which is a mixture of water and sawdust, frozen into a solid, then frozen together into a ship. Problems with strength and production stopped the project from being completed, but to this day it remains a fascinating application of ice to military problems.
More recently, the Ice Corporation of America proposes taking advantage of using ice, not for a building material, but for its phase change abilities. The corporation suggested bulk freezing as a way to store water in the form of ice in winter and use the melt water in summer for irrigation in dry Northern areas of the USA(figure 7). A by-product of this process will be free cooling potential in summer from the phase-change energy).
More links and references about the uses of snow and ice:
- Advice in Ice has instructions on how to build your own igloo, and other fascinating ice information!
- Goldsworthy, Andy. Ice and Snow Drawings. Edinburgh: FruitMarket Gallery, 1992. Art using the melt patterns of colored ice and snow.
- The Ice Hotel website
- Vanderbilt, T., Debany, J. The Unsettling Art of Building a Snow House: Lessons from Lapland. I.D.: Magazine of International Design. 2004. Vol:51, Iss:4, p.62-69. Descriptions of ‘Snow Show’, the problems and benefits of working with ice as an artistic media.