Ambitious, unique and impermanent, seventeen sublime works in snow and ice were realized through partnerships between thirty-four impassioned international artists and architects. A triumph of creativity over fleeting material, the results are ingenious and breathtaking.
In snowbound Lapland the seventeen partnerships produced projects that ranged from exercises in formal experimentation to highly conceptual artistic statements. Ultimately, the projects represented a process of exploration and flowed from an imaginative collaboration, not only between the artist's creative and the architect's pragmatic vision, but also between the form of the design and the inevitable decay of the materials involved in its construction.
The visceral impact of the -45°C site was a fundamental ingredient in each work, and the experience of that environment was essential; fortunately, the photographs and the participants' statements capture the grandeur of this experience.