As one of the three winning designs of the Winnipeg Warming Huts international competition, the ephemeral pavilion was built on the frozen Assiniboine river during the winter of 2022-2023. The ambition of the project was to take advantage of the different potentials that we had at our disposal, in particular, the possibility of creating ice through the local climatic conditions. The pavilion was envisioned as a curtain of ice that defined an enclosed shelter to protect visitors from the cold wind while providing a space for reflection. It consisted of a simple man-made framework that gained mass through the deliberate addition of water that gradually froze and accumulated along the ropes, like a frozen waterfall. Without the framework, the ice would not have achieved the shelter’s form. Without the ice, the framework would not have constituted a shelter.
The assembly process also took advantage of the site’s conditions. A series of equally spaced timber columns were positioned in holes that were drilled into the thick layer of river ice. Once in place, water was poured onto the holes and allowed to freeze, fixing the columns in a similar way to concrete foundations. After the timber framework was completed, ropes were tensed and tied around it, affording additional stability to the structure and creating a dense network for the ice to form on. The timber and ropes used were recyclable and biodegradable, reducing waste and the risk of environmental impact to a minimum.
The solution allowed for the man-made structure to cover a generous area with
a reduced budget and a limited amount of material. Additionally, the local architects’ and contractor’s experience with cold-weather construction helped optimise some of the solutions on site to further reduce material use. Once the framework was completed, water was pumped from the river underneath the ice layer and conducted onto a simple linear dripping system that was left in place during a few days on each side, allowing icicles to slowly form over the ropes first, and eventually over each other. In this way, the pavilion partially constructed and deconstructed itself, changing every day throughout the winter.
When the spring came, the ice walls got thinner and more translucent until openings began to let sunshine in, revealing the internal framework.
In a warming planet where the poles are melting away and sea temperatures are
rising, the site offered an opportunity to create awareness about our climate’s fragility in a modest, yet very physical way. The pavilion was designed to be experienced from within the space itself and to allow visitors to briefly disconnect from the exterior world. It functioned as a device to provoke visitors to reflect on the temperature conditions that were necessary for the pavilion to exist in the first place, from its assembly process to the frozen river it sat on. It invited visitors to contemplate the complexity of the physical change that water undergoes as it freezes and the forms that are naturally created by this. Since the ice formations are inextricably associated with the artificial framework, it also acts as a reminder of the many possibilities that working together with nature can offer us.
