[Image: Photo by Ben Nilsson of Big Ben Productions].These photos of the ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, just popped up everywhere. I think this might literally be one of the most beautiful hotels in the world. It makes me wonder if architects might someday CNC-mill buildings out of glaciers.
“You sleep in a thermal sleeping bag on a special bed of snow and ice, on reindeer skins,” we read. “You are awakened in the morning with a cup of hot lingonberry juice at your bedside.”
[Images: All photos by Ben Nilsson of Big Ben Productions].
“Breakfast buffet, morning sauna and towels [are] included,” of course – and there’s a restaurant on site, made from ice, serving “whitefish roe, venison and reindeer, cloudberries and arctic raspberries. All transformed into tasty delicacies guaranteed to please the most discerning gourmet.”
This year, the hotel was built with collaborative input from students of Stockholm’s Royal Institute of Technology.
So how is the ICEHOTEL actually built?
“The building process starts in mid-November,” the hotel’s managers explain, “when the snow guns start humming and large clouds of snow start to drift along the Torne River.”
- The snow is sprayed on huge steel forms and allowed to freeze. After a couple of days, the forms are removed, leaving a maze of free-standing corridors of snow.
[Image: Photo by Ben Nilsson of Big Ben Productions].
They continue:
- In the corridors, dividing walls are built in order to create rooms and suites. Ice blocks, harvested at springtime from Torne River, are now being transported into the hotel where selected artists from all over the world start creating the art and design of the persihable material.
These “corridors of snow,” of course, could be used to form instant cities almost anywhere; with a few “snow guns” and a bunch of “huge steel forms,” you too could build an ICEHOTEL – or an ICECITY, or an ICETOWN, just waiting to be inhabited.
It’s architecture as controlled phase transition: coaxing temporary forms out of what wants to be liquid.
To mis-paraphrase Sanford Kwinter paraphrasing Alfred North Whitehead, we might say that this is an example of Misplaced Concreteness.
[Image: By Ben Nilsson of Big Ben Productions].
By Stacy Shoemaker Rauen
For the lobby, the designers enlisted the help of local artists: a recent graduate from the California College of the Arts designed a bench made from felt moving blankets; furniture maker Thomas Wold built a computer station from old cabinets and constructed a coffee table with furniture parts including a skateboard; and product designer David Pierce created the check-in desk with reclaimed wood from Sacramento. “From a designer’s point of view, we had to be as creative as we can be, without spending a lot of money,” says Laurino, who was JDV’s art director before branching out on his own 10 years ago. And for a bit of whimsy, they added a few playful touches—four colorful cuckoo clocks are set to the times of cities throughout the world whose names incorporate the idea of good (Hope Point, Greenland; Happy City Hotel, Cairo, Egypt), a ReadyMade-sponsored vending machine is filled with recycled items, and guests are encouraged to use the photobooth and post their photos on cork walls enclosing the elevator. 
Cheeky additions continue in the 117 guestrooms. “Be Good” stretches across one wall, pillows are covered in fabric from the former hotel’s bedspreads, a pendant light is made of recycled Voss water bottles, and vertical blinds feature various nontraditional images of a day in the life in San Francisco (like chotchskies in Chinatown, a burrito place in the Mission). “We didn’t want to take ourselves too seriously,” says Etsuki Lee, mentioning that she and Laurino hadn’t worked together before Harvey paired them up for this project. 
With two definitions of good explored, altruism—a JDV philosophy—was next. There’s a philanthropy concierge phone in the lobby that connects guests to local volunteering matchmaking service One Brick (“It’s voluntourism,” Harvey says); local artwork throughout the hotel and on key cards is courtesy of Creativity Explored, a San Francisco-based non-profit that works with artists with developmental disabilities; and the hotel offers a carbon offset program for guests. “We wanted to create a community, instead of a destination,” Harvey says, adding that he hopes to bring the concept to other cities. 
Lobby 
Good Pizza 
