Dreamscape - step-by-step description of the construction process
Many people have asked us how we built #dreamscape, so we thought we’d lay out the steps.
Our construction process involved a series of proposals which we modified once on site and in discussion with the larger hotel design team.
We began by levelling the room and inserting an intricate painted-plywood baseplate the size of the room, which ensured that each subsequent ice block we placed was perfectly positioned, and incremental error could be avoided.
We then sent a series of cutting files to the ice-cutting machine, which created slabs which were then forklifted over and marked with our intricate patterns by the CNC machine.
We used the outer grooves to carve the thick slabs into treads by hand with a 90-degree chainsaw.
We then used the adjustable angle of that chainsaw to carve the chamfers on the vertical blocks which we would place behind each tread, slowly building up a faceted wall of ice-blocks behind the emerging staircase.Both treads and blocks were cut in the giant production hall, but transported by tractor and forklift to the actual refrigerated ICEHOTEL 365 room 400 metres away.
We stacked the treads - a series of large 200mm-thick overlapping sculptural slabs - onto the baseplate, with each one then followed by a 320mm-thick chamfered block behind it, ensuring their top surfaces were entirely flat to receive the next overlapping tread, and ensuring their junction was fully and carefully glued with frozen water.
As we placed each chamfered vertical block, we placed 2 adjacent ice surface edges together and then either cut them with a long curving-toothed Japanese knife blade - or an additional pass of a long chainsaw - to ensure the creation of a slot with parallel edges that enabled the ice blocks to be pushed cleanly together, and the water droplets we slowly dripped down this new gap to work its magic and freeze and mortar.
This process meant that the 1st tread lay flat on the ground, which the 2nd - and each subsequent one - was only supported along its front edge and sides, with the rear edge hovering like a beam in space.
We added short curling ice blocks to the front tips of each tread (which curled in plan from a straight line perpendicular to your direction of travel up them to lines parallel to your journey - a geometry easiest seen in plan), which we then carved down by hand with a chainsaw to create a continuous sloping line from top to bottom, creating a smooth fillet at the base to slowly morph this shape into the ice trims that connected the journey of these 2 side stringers into the vertical frames either side of the door.
Once the treads were stacked alongside the wall of chamfered blocks, we levelled the top surface and laid a 22m-thick plywood platform to support the bed (we would have also made it ice if the underside if the mattress was ever going to be visually attractive).
On top of this platform we leaned an angled plywood sheet to form a backrest, its edges cut eccentrically to map the junction of this plane (angled in plan) with the corner of the vaulted ceiling above. We then built 2 short vertical plywood walls at either edge of the platform, parallel to the side edges of the bed, and wedged them against the platform with a series of cross-sectional plywood shapes that described a cross section cut-through the bunches of snow tentacles running alongside the bed and exploding out from it, their outline inset to allow for an eventual covering of 50mm of snice either side.In the meantime, we re-measured the actual dimensions of the room compared to our virtual model, and tweaked the final dimensions of our tentacles.
We hand-drew this geometry onto a series of plywood sheets, and hand jigsawed out the central beam for each tentacle, patching beams together whenever they exceeded the lengths that could fit on a single sheet.
We then cut 3 plywood sheets into an extensive series of 150-mm wide cross beams, which we screwed into the beams to create cross-sectional stability and prevent warp(you can see these reinforced-snow crosses in the drawing cross-sections)
We then mounted the base of these tentacle beams into slots set within the tentacle cross-section mounted alongside the bed, and fixed their outer tips into their locations in either wall or ceiling.We then started infilling the cross-shaped sections running the length of each beam with snow and snice, which we experimentally mixed with water to achieve the perfect consistency of stickiness and smoothness.
This snice layer was then covered with a more elegant layer of virgin white snow, rubbed and sanded smooth.
We placed the mattress on the platform and filled the gaps between them and the tentacles with infill ice trims which continued the lines that run from the door frame and up the stair stringers - filling any gaps between them and the tentacles with small amounts of new snow.
We then covered both the front of the plywood backrest and the underside of the mattress platform with snice, blending all edges into the snowy surfaces of the room.
Finally, we drew our proposed colonnade of columns onto the 2 massive 320mm-thick ice side walls that supported the entire bed and tentacle construction above, and consulted with the design team before we started cutting into them.
We initially carved out large simple holes with a chainsaw, cutting each chunk into further fragments for portability.
Then we softened the sharp 90-degree edges with the chainsaw before finally setting to work chiselling them into organic shapes by hand carefully honing and polishing before we finally treated the surface with a hot air gun to maximise its luminous transparency.
