Ice architecture occupies a strange and wonderful corner of human creativity — structures possible only in certain climates, for certain weeks, before melting entirely. This rainbow igloo from Edmonton is one of the most inventive examples we’ve come across. The method is almost disarmingly simple: balloons filled with food-colored water, frozen solid, stacked into walls. Obvious in hindsight. Nobody had done it quite like this before.
I built a lot of igloos and snow caves in my day, but never were they veritable works-of-art, like this rainbow igloo.
Thanks to an ingenious mother from Edmonton it’s quite possible nobody will every build a plain white igloo again. The adventure began with a kernel of an idea from Brigid Burton, whose daughter Kathleen Starrie and boyfriend Daniel Gray, an engineering student, were coming for a winter visit from New Zealand. Wanting to “keep him occupied” during the frigid winter days that often dip down to -25 °F (-31 °C), last October she began filling paper cartons with colored water and setting them outside to form translucent ice bricks. She hoped Gray’s engineering skills would do the rest. Like a total champ he accepted the challenge and with the help of additional family and neighbors the team spent nearly 150 hours fitting the 500 ice bricks into place. After completion the raingbow igloo was so visually striking the local news showed up to do a feature on it.
You can read the full story at the Global Edmonton and see many more construction photoshere. Pretty sure Kathleen is basically required to marry this guy now. (via reddit)
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