WORKS

The first of two projects that entailed “working” buildings by means of ice, exploiting the exceptionally low temperatures typical of the continental climate in places like Minneapolis, concerned a large abandoned school located in a park, which was awaiting conversion or demolition. Water was poured over the walls and, freezing during the night, completely covered the building with a coat of ice. In this way the appearance of the architecture was maintained, and yet dematerialized since a new natural element was laid over the original material of the façade. In a way this “statement,” which would be repeated in works of the same period, asked the material used for building to retain its natural state and not to become a construction material. The school preserved its typology, the typical form of that typology, but once coated in ice it was the material that transformed it: it came alive, for it had been worked by nature.