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Seven new huts unveiled at The Forks on Friday promise to warm the cockles and light up the imaginations of wintry Winnipeggers looking to take a break while skating, walking, biking or skiing the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
Seven winning warming hut designs unveiled Friday now join the growing roster of winter shacks set up each winter along the Nestaweya River Trail.
The public is invited to see the huts being built over the next week and chat with the designers. Once completed, the new warming hits will be brought down to the trail.
A panel of judges selected finalists from a field of more than 200 submissions from around the world, including Moon Rabbit, a winning design by Yu Liu from Shanghai, China, that draws on ancient mythology to represent wisdom and good fortune in the form of a hare, according to a news release from The Forks.
The winning submission by Franziska Agrawal, from Munich, Germany, dubbed Continuum: When Water Pauses and We Move, is a 30-metre passageway of arches made from compacted snow set up on the ice where the Red and Assiniboine converge.
The design by Noël Picaper from Paris, France, and Joffrey About from Brussels, Belgium, is titled Dram: As the Cold Answers. The metal build includes a weather vane and suspended tree trunk that works as a gong.
The seven winning warming hut designs for this year’s competition are announced at The Forks on Friday. (Prabhjot Singh Lotey/CBC)
Wildlife Scramble comes from a U.S. team that includes Charles Sharpless and Jessica Colangelo from Fayetteville, Ark., and Adrian Gonzalez and Ashley Colangelo from Gainesville, Fla.
Their design spotlights local plants and wildlife through interactive wood blocks depicting creatures, along with bench seating.
3 local designs make hut cut
For the first time in the program’s 15-year history, Travel Manitoba has its own warming hut, a heart-shaped structure called Canada’s Heart is Calling — a name echoing the provincial tourism motto.
“When you go inside, it’s quite reflective,” said Travel Manitoba president and CEO Colin Ferguson.
“It gives you a different perspective on things, and the opportunity to spend time with family and get out of the wind.”
A group of students in Grade 7 from Bison Run School in Winnipeg designed Warm Up With a Great Book. Their structure takes the shape of an open book as a nod to literacy — and includes a free library for visitors.
“It was really fun getting to start with a drawing, then building the design with … cardboard, clay and all that stuff,” said Rex Tang, one of the Bison Run School students.
After the design work, Sputnik Architecture did a blueprint, and the students then worked with builder Anvil Tree to “build an actual thing which is now shown out there,” said Tang.
Members of the University of Manitoba’s faculty of architecture round out the winners with Bridge-Stairs for John Hejduk.
The scaffolding-based design is meant to “frame the landmarks that define The Forks historic port,” Elena Everton, one of the students part of the team, said in the news release.