Ice Hotels · 4

There is a chapel among the rooms, built from ice and packed snow like the rest. It is carved out fresh each winter, so no two versions are the same, and the walls, seats and openings are shaped from the material itself. It is used for ceremonies during the season.

The hotel is the only one of its kind in North America and stands near Québec City. It exists only in winter: the structure is raised at the start of the cold season, opened for a few months and allowed to melt in spring. Arched halls, sleeping rooms and public spaces are all made from snow and ice.

The chapel is set within the winter structure, off the main corridor among the sleeping rooms rather than in a separate building. It is reached the same way as the rest of the interior, on foot from the entrance.

Some of the rooms are made by invited artists, each working on one suite. They cut walls, furniture and figures from the ice, and every season brings a new set of designs, because the previous ones no longer exist. The result is a group of rooms with different hands behind them.

Icehotel has been built at Jukkasjärvi, in northern Sweden, since 1989. The ice comes from the Torne river beside it, cut and stored for the following winter, and the seasonal structure is raised from that material each year. Around it are the village, the river and low forest, and the site also holds buildings that stand all year.

The art suites are inside the seasonal structure, along the corridors that run off the main hall, among the simpler rooms. They sit in the part of the site that is rebuilt annually rather than in the permanent buildings.

Carving covers the walls of the ice bar, and the subject changes from season to season, since it is remade. The counter, the seating and the reliefs are all cut from ice and snow. What was there last winter has gone, and the new work is not a copy of it.

SnowVillage is built in Finnish Lapland, in the Kittilä area near Lainio, and it lasts one winter at a time. The site includes sleeping rooms, halls and the bar, all of them raised from snow and ice, with restaurant and service buildings of ordinary construction nearby. Around it is open forest country well north of the Arctic Circle.

The ice bar sits within the snow structure, off the main hall, among the corridors that lead to the sleeping rooms. It is on the same level as everything else and reached on foot from the entrance.

At the middle of the village stands the main dome, larger than the sleeping ones and joined to them. It works as the common room of the place, and the smaller domes open off it, so the plan is a centre with rooms around it. All of it is built from snow.

Iglu-Dorf is put up high above the valley near Zermatt and taken down at the end of the season, then built again the next winter. Nothing is permanent. The village sits in open alpine ground, well above the tree line, and the peaks around it are the only structures on the horizon that stay from year to year.

The main dome is at the centre of the village, with the sleeping domes connected to it directly. The site is up on the mountain above the town, reached by lift and then on foot across the snow.