Join us for the presentation of Tooling with Ice and Sawdust Structures by Julio Diarte, Elena Vazquez, and Mikael Parkman.
This SVP project aimed at exploring the potential of pykrete, a mix of ice and sawdust, as a building material for temporary shell structures in Umeå’s winter. Inspired by traditional and contemporary ice construction techniques developed in cold climates as well as funicular vaults and historical arched construction techniques, researchers designed and tested a reusable and adaptable formwork to cast a shell with pykrete blocks. The formwork was parametrically designed to cast vaults of different widths, and it was successfully assembled and tested using compacted snow blocks. Though, experiments casting Pykrete blocks were incomplete due to lack of proper temperatures below -10°C, leading to brittle blocks that weren’t usable for casting. Researchers plan to test it again next winter as well as reusing the formwork to test other biomass reinforced composite material such as biochar, wood fiber, and mycelium as binder.
A warm welcome to this outdoor presentation where we will offer a typical spring-winter lunch, a barbecue in the sun!
