The largest man-made ice environment ever built outside the Arctic will be opening on London's South Bank for a limited period this spring, offering visitors the chance to see art and state-of-the-art structural ingenuity in an unusually cold context. The show makes its world debut in London this May.
IceSpace will house a gallery showing ice sculptures and incorporating a stage for live acts, a "chill-out" room that will double as a caf?ar as well as the country's first summer outside ice-skating rink. There will also be demonstrations of ice sculpting and winter sports.
Visitors will be given hot chocolate, mini Shepherd's pies and a jacket as they enter the icy environment from the warm outside. The ice walls and roof will be embedded with LED's that will glow through the ice in various colours while visitors will also have the surreal opportunity to ice skate outside in the summer.
IceSpace will be built from 200 tonnes of imported ice manufactured in Ontario, Canada. The designers say that the crystal clarity of the ice, which cannot be found in the household variety, can only be developed through a slow 4-day freezing process that allows oxygen to escape.
The main structure is inflatable and will be made out of a composite canvas material that will help to keep the sun and the rain out but the ice in. High-tech cooling devices will also be used to help keep the environment at a constant -5? C.
Phillip Hughes, the managing director of IceBox which is launching the venue, believes that the exhibition will show how ice can be used in a conceptual way.
"IceBox has always avoided cliched ice sculptures of swans or dolphins and instead has focused on more abstract designs. The gallery will be extremely dramatic and filled only with 'edgy' and contemporary ice sculptures," he told Guardian Unlimited.
Most recently the company was behind the sculpting of a life-sized VW Polo which was used in a Volkswagen advertising campaign based outside the Saatchi gallery.
Although IceSpace will have a bar and be made available for private or corporate evening functions, Hughes predicts that the main body of visitors will be families and schoolchildren.
"Kids have a complete and utter fascination for ice: they find it mysterious yet attractive. IceSpace will be unique in its scale, beauty and atmosphere."
IceSpace is scheduled to travel to Barcelona at the end of the summer, come back to London for Christmas and then go to Berlin for the following Easter. The company hopes to crack North America in two years.
· For further information see icespace.net
Tickets go on sale on April 2 at £20 for adults and £14 for children.
