FROZEN LANDSCAPE
10% of the Earth’s surface is covered in ice, in the form of glaciers, ice sheets, and ice caps.
Icy environments are vital to regulating Earth’s climate: they reflect sunlight away, and help keep the entire planet cold. However, the sub-zero temperatures of this harsh climate can make sustaining communities difficult, and this city must also grapple with melting glaciers and rising sea levels. While they are surrounded by ice, melting it is energy intensive, so residents have to plan ahead to have enough clean, usable water.
Structures in this landscape must be designed to withstand the elements and help people stay warm, but also to foster a resilient and lively city, where residents can maintain a strong sense of community in an isolated place and through long, dark winters. While frozen landscapes may seem inhospitable, they sustain entire ecosystems– it just takes adaptation!
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Fridge & Freezer: A Penguin Story
Penguin habitat
CannonDesign
“Candee the Penguin” travels to NYC seeking shelter for her colony. Fridge & Freezer is a welcoming home. An igloo glows from within and integrates with a catch basin collecting water runoff from melting snow and glaciers. The design balances penguins’ need for shelter with their inextricable relationship to water.
CannonDesign design solutions that help organizations, communities and people flourish. At the nexus of strategy, experience, architecture, engineering and social impact, CannonDesign were named by Fast Company as one of the world’s most innovative firms, we remain committed to furthering the power of design to improve our world.
Case Study: M.K. Čiurlionis Concert Centre Competition – Kaunas, Lithuania
“Music is liquid architecture; architecture is frozen music”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
M.K. Čiurlionis saw painting as an extension of music and carried this forward as our design inspiration, while celebrating the Nemunas River, a natural demarcation of the city of Kaunas. The site divides like two staves of a musical score. The southern section (the treble clef) is raised above the floodplain, while the northern section (the bass clef) is at a lower elevation. The two areas are bifurcated by a stone wall running east to west, and the building cantilevers over the wall, reaching towards the river.
Gingerbread City Eco-Housing Authority
Eco-buildings
New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)
Two modern eco-buildings stand on opposite sides, with a central frozen lake which serves as an ice-skating rink. The buildings incorporate windmills, solar panels, terraces, and a built-in ski slope. Surrounding the housing complex are dedicated bike lanes, promoting eco-friendly transportation. Recycling/compost bins further underscore the sector’s commitment to sustainability.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the largest public housing authority in North America, was created in 1935 to provide decent, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. NYCHA is home to 1 in 17 New Yorkers, providing affordable housing to 528,105 authorized residents through public housing and Permanent Affordability Commitment Together (PACT) programs as well as Section 8 housing. NYCHA has 177,569 apartments in 2,411 buildings across 335 conventional public housing and PACT developments.
www.nyc.gov/site/nycha
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Hjells Kitchen
Village
Michaelis Boyd Inc
At the base of an icy cliff huddles a village of homes inspired by hjells, traditional Norwegian A-frame structures for drying and preserving cod. During the day, the community fishes in the surrounding sea; at night, a thick blanket of snow insulates and protects.
Michaelis Boyd are architects and interior designers based in London and New York. We create emotive, meaningful spaces with an emphasis on environmentally conscious construction and materiality. Our work spans five continents and ranges from ground-up residential and high-end hospitality to private members’ clubs and heritage building restoration.
Case Study: Soho Farmhouse – Boathouse
The Boathouse project exemplifies the innovative incorporation of liquid water into architectural design, akin to our Gingerbread City’s whimsical depiction of ice as a seasonal insulator for its nestled homes. This architectural endeavour seamlessly blends a naturally occurring pond with an artful architectural overlay, inviting water indoors as a functional swimming pool and a unique medium for habitation.
Philosophically, our Gingerbread City inhabitants coexist within and alongside snow and ice, showcasing water’s active role within architecture. Both projects harmoniously blur the lines between nature and design, mirroring an appreciation for the natural world’s integration into architectural creativity.
Hotel Fram & Rock Crystal Ice Festival
Hotel
ZH Architects
Inspired by the Norwegian ship, the Fram, used during an attempt to reach the North Pole, our hotel is designed using Passive House construction techniques. The building envelope is airtight and well-insulated, and window placement is carefully considered to control heat gain and loss. It requires minimal energy to stay warm and is fully electrified. Solar panels are installed on the exterior to harness the sunlight during the summer, storing it in an electric battery bank for darker winters.
To minimize disruption to the delicate landscape, the hotel is elevated on pilotis. Adjacent to the hotel, there is a gallery space constructed temporarily from snow and ice. Ice blocks are expertly cut and stacked to create robust walls, while packed snow provides structural reinforcement. This structure undergoes a natural cycle, melting every spring and being redesigned each winter, so is in perpetual transformation.
ZH Architects is an award-winning architecture firm based in NYC which focuses on integrating sustainable building practices into its current body of modern and design-forward work. Comprised of a dynamic and talented group of architects and designers, ZH approaches each project with the conviction that there are unique and sophisticated solutions to all design problems regardless of size, scale or budget. ZH Architects is a widely recognized industry leader in Passive House design and works closely with clients and consultants to explore new high-performance strategies that help ensure the next generation of buildings will meet global climate challenges head on.
Wavy House
Housing
David Ling Architect with Jenny Lee
Richard Buckminster Fuller once said, “Dwelling on water should have its unique architectural style and technology, rather than simply being an extension of the architecture on land.”
The site of the Wavy House is located in the harbor, New York. The project aims to explore the possibility of innovation for oceanic living, seeking to rewild the land and restore the overfished marine ecosystem under sustainable development. It utilizes wave action to generate power and absorb wave energy.
David Ling Architect is an international award-winning practice composed of exhibition spaces, creative offices, high-end retail and high-end residences. Combining his experience he has added floating habitation in his research. The Essence of Ling’s Architecture is the sculptural integration of space, form, light and function enriched by materiality. David Ling’s ultimate goal is to create something never said before, in a timeless manner.
Key Lime Bird Hide
Bird Hide
Natalie Marshall
The Key Lime Bird Hide nestles into the harsh frozen landscape that floods on the melting of the ice. It provides shelter for bird watchers and arctic explorers. The structure is informed by and blends into the surrounding landscape – bird hides are meant to give cover to those who want to observe nature without standing out.
Natalie Marshall is an interdisciplinary artist and designer currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She recently graduated from The University of Michigan with a BFA in Art & Design, and has a passion for 3D design, experimentation with new materials and mediums, craftsmanship, and hands-on process based work.
The Revolving Floating Home
Housing
David Ling Architect with Honghao Chen
We must consider how to adapt to the circumstances when we must live on water as the sea level rises. The initiative intends to design dwellings for residents of flood-prone areas and reuse materials to create furnishings in order to reduce trash. Heavy metals and other contaminants from factories along the coast have contaminated the environment. We should assume responsibility for preserving the environment as local residents. By covering the outside surface with a layer of shark-like scales, the vessel lowers water pollution while it travels through the water.
David Ling Architect is an international award-winning practice composed of exhibition spaces, creative offices, high-end retail and high-end residences. Combining his experience he has added floating habitation in his research. The Essence of Ling’s Architecture is the sculptural integration of space, form, light and function enriched by materiality. David Ling’s ultimate goal is to create something never said before, in a timeless manner.
IN FLUX
Housing
David Ling Architect with Soo Yoon Chung
In response to rising sea levels, IN FLUX is a floating housing project that considers the user’s position in a site vulnerable to flooding due to climate change. The design emphasizes supplying clean water and incorporates elements mindful of life underwater. Without tension in the ecosystem, the sole existence of a species is impossible due to the interdependent relationship of coexistence. Ultimately, this project celebrates the experience of life on the water as natural to land-dwelling inhabitants and articulates the great responsibility that comes with the choice of living on the water alongside marine species.
David Ling Architect is an international award-winning practice composed of exhibition spaces, creative offices, high-end retail and high-end residences. Combining his experience he has added floating habitation in his research. The Essence of Ling’s Architecture is the sculptural integration of space, form, light and function enriched by materiality. David Ling’s ultimate goal is to create something never said before, in a timeless manner.
Iceport
Community
CW&T
The year is 2042. Icebergs have become more common in unexpected places. An iceberg has grounded itself in the middle of a once-bustling city airport. As the area was evacuated, a group of survivors carved out tunnels and habitats along with generators and other essential systems. Over time, the iceberg became a thriving community, known as Iceport.
CW&T started as and remains the two-person design practice of Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. With backgrounds in Architecture, Film and Computer Science, the duo met at NYU ITP where they began their scale and medium agnostic approach to design. CW&T is the recipient of the 2022 National Design Award for Product Design from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Case Study: Power Ground Water
A series of printed circuit boards [PCBs] weave a narrative from the fundamentals of electronics, to the transistor, logic gates, computational building blocks to a programmable micro-controller.
Modern Ice Lodge
Housing
SPG Architects
The Modern Ice Lodge houses are built modularly, constructed off-site to facilitate economical and sustainably conceived construction methods. The cantilevered forms provide landscape views, creating a substantive relationship to the environment even as the piloti and elevated deck raise the outdoor living areas above the dangers of coastal storms and flooding.
SPG Architects’ modernist approach to design allows for the various functions of a space to be organized and expressed, while eliminating the cacophony of the untended environment. Architectural ideas are drawn from the project site and the client’s needs and desires. These then are expressed through manipulations of form and light.
Case Study: Coastal Modular House
The Coastal Modular House is a prototypical single-family home designed in response to the increasing need for resilience in the built environment. The project meets this need by employing modular construction with thoughtfully restrained site work that limits the impact on the environment, while providing long-term solutions for acclimating to increased flood risk. The use of piloti at ground level allows for the vertical disengagement of the building from its vulnerable landscape. In order to engage the house with its environs, the enclosure is perforated with large expanses of high-efficiency, hurricane-rated glass, with terraces added on both levels.
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