McGill Tradition: Ice Building project on campus

Professor Pieter Sijpkes’ students in the “Philosophy of Structures” course are building a catenary dome made out of snow and ice on the McGill campus.

He has been doing ice construction experiments on the McGill Campus since he was a student in Architecture in 1972.

Pieter Sijpkes, Professor post-retirement, School of Architecture, McGill University

“The project is related to this ice model—the dome on the Campus will be a full scale copy of the living space within the winning Mars Habitat competition. This competition was held by NASA-Makerbot last year. The School of Architecture Ice Lab contributed to the winning competition entry by supplying a scale model built by our unique ice printing robot. The structure will be fifteen feet high, plus a flag.”
— Professor Sijpkes

pieter [dot] sijpkes [at] mcgill [dot] ca (English)