ICE shell - recent application to winter architecture

摘要

ICE SHELL is thin, and its structural material is snow-ice. It may be considered as a contemporary “Igloo in Eskimo” or “Kamakura in Japan”. It can cover a larger area compared with these classical snow-ice structures, because of its high structural efficiency. It creates a fantastic and beautiful space and may provide an efficient architectural solution to certain problems in the snowy and cold regions during winter. This paper describes 1) looking back upon the study of structural and constructional engineering aspects of ice shell developed in Asahikawa for the last 20 years, and 2) recent architectural application for winter leisure spaces covered by many ice shells including a large free-shape ice shell and 20-m span ice dome, at Tomamu in Hokkaido.