Barrow Cabins, a photo series by Seattle-based photographer Eirik Johnson, depicts homebuilt Alaskan hunting cabins during the seasonal extremes far above the Arctic Circle. Johnson got the idea for the series of diptychs while on assignment photographing a decommissioned US Navy base outside of Barrow, Alaska.

Hugging the US’s northernmost point, Barrow is so far north that the sun never fully sets during the summer—which gave Johnson ample sunlight in the evenings to explore the seasonal hunting camps on the outskirts of town. Built by the native Iñupiat people, the hunting cabins are vernacular shelters built of cast-off and found materials, used for only part of the year. While photographing the cabins, Johnson “felt the work was missing something” and decided to “return to the camp during the extreme counterpoint of the Arctic winter solstice, when the sun never completely rises and the sea ice has moved in to blanket the cabins.” The result: immaculate, paired images of vernacular structures amid the Arctic’s climactic extremes. Click through to see the photos!

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The last few weeks have been brutally cold for us here on the East Coast, and even wearing our scarves and sweaters indoors hasn’t helped. The dreary bit of  good news—it could be much worse! Though it feels as if our office is made of ice, perhaps it would be better if it actually were. Our Arctic-dwelling Inuit friends have thrived on northern ice plates for thousands of years, in shelters made entirely of packed snow, where temperatures inside can reach into the mid-60s Fahrenheit! A new book, Igloo: Contemporary Vernacular Architecture by Alejandro Bahamon and Ana Canizares, charts the history and development of vernacular ice structures and their translation into contemporary architecture.

We’ve pulled some examples from the book, plus a few of our own choosing to bring you today’s snow-packed roundup. So pull on your fingerless gloves, and click through for the photos!

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Photo via flickr

Having survived the great Nor’Easter of 2013 (otherwise not known as “Nemo”), and now with the near foot-yield of snowfall virtually erased by rain, we’re already feeling a little nostalgic for the powdery stuff. (True, had we been just that much more north and east, we’d probably be singing a different tune.) These photos of Japan’s Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route, for instance, have us hoping for many more canonical blizzards, sled rides, and snowmen.

The route, which links the Tateyama and Omachi municipalities, is a tourist destination. Where the road passes through the Hida Mountains, monolithic walls of packed snow bound either side of the motorway. The 20-meter-high corridor was sculpted using snowblowers and backhoe. The path was completed in 1981 and continues to draw tourists, actually only tourists—the road only services charter buses of gawking visitors—to this day. Click through for more photos!

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All photos: British Antarctic Survey

Call it this generation’s “Walking City.” Halley VI, the latest iteration of Britain’s Halley Antarctic research stations, is now fully operational—and it walks, sort of. Halley VI opened today on the centennial commemoration of the first British Antarctic expeditions on the Brunt Ice Shelf,  which launched an entirely new and incredibly fertile avenue of scientific research exploring the Earth’s near-space atmosphere. Designed by Hugh Broughton Architects, the new “re-locatable”—i.e. “movable”—facility is the first of its kind in the world. Continue.

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Project: Memu Meadows Experimental House

Architect: Kengo Kuma and Associates

Location: Hokkaidō, Japan

Function: The architecture of this experimental cabin in Japan was influenced by the traditional “Chise” style of the Ainu people, whose homes typically were built out of bamboo grass in order to insulate the heat from a central fireplace during cold winter months. Kuma’s house replicates this model, upgrading the insulation system with an efficient, light wall system—recycled plastic bottles sandwiched in between two thin membranes—that locks in heat and refracts light from the central fire.  There is no artificial light, Kuma says, because the intent of the home is to synchronize the lives of its residents with the earth’s natural cycle of light and dark. Read more about this project in the Architizer database.

Photos © Kengo Kuma

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Photo: John Gress/Reuters

No, the lead photo is not the work of Mr. Freeze—that would be Gotham—but rather, frigid temperatures that gripped Chicago all of last week. A massive fire broke out at an abandoned warehouse in Chicago’s South Side last Tuesday night, a blaze the scale of which the city hasn’t witnessed in years. A huge fleet of firefighters responded to the scene to suppress the flames, where they began to shower the building in water. Only the jets of water froze immediately on contact, leaving the warehouse and everything around it—cars, sidewalks, equipment—encased in a thick layer of ice. The fire was eventually put out, but not before hell froze over. More photos of the site, after the jump.

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You pray for snow, and you get slush. This week’s freezing temperatures have left New Yorkers without the charms and (brief) relief that come with snow, and only with the danger of black ice, the heartache of flurries, and the annoyance of slush. It’s this time of year that we find ourselves daydreaming about ditching our unflattering parkas and fleeing down South. (This is the same dream where Florida is the promised land, employment consists solely of poolside lounging, and we all tan well.)

True, winter can be enjoyable, but at a remove. That’s why we combed our database to find the best of architecture + winter, so that you won’t have to brave through freezing winds and ice-slicked sidewalks to experience snow-capped cabins, ice huts, and ski jumps. Sit back, take a sip of hot coffee, and enjoy all that winter has to offer. Click through for our slideshow.

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Every winter brings snow, ice, and the latest iteration of the ICEHOTEL. The glacial hotel, located in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, consists of icy pavilions and rooms designed by a different architect or designer . These “art-suites,” which are hand-constructed from scratch every November/December and dismantled at the end of the season in mid-April, are all built using only a few basic materials, namely snow, ice blocks, and “snice”, a snow-ice aggregate stronger than the former and more insulating than the latter. The 1000 tons of ice blocks and 30,000 cubic meters of snice used to build the hotel are harvested from the Torne River, home to the purest ice in the world. Each of the original designs may stack ice blocks in a modular fashion and even carve them into bespoke forms, while frosty engravings and other ornament may also be incorporated. PINPIN Studio‘s current suit at ICEHOTEL has all of these elements, from doric(e) columns and an ice slab bed to powdery “murals” that grace the ceilings and side walls. More photos after the jump.

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Photo: Xinhuanet

The opening this week of the Jingyue Snow World festival brought a fully appointed fairy-tale village to the Jingyuetan National Forest in northeastern China. With a life-size church (complete with onion domes!), a turreted castle, an estate-size home, and a band of horses, the festival is a more stately, restrained cousin of the candy-colored neon ice village at the Yangqing Ice Festival, which inaugurated the year of the dragon back in February. Click through for more pictures!

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Every year, the hardy residents of Winnipeg, Manitoba, love to ice skate up the frozen Assiniboine River, known as the world’s longest naturally frozen river. To make the adventure a little more cozy, Toronto-based architecture firm Lateral Office have designed clever shelters as part of the 2013 International Warming Hut Exposition Competition (yep, that’s a real competition!). Read more.

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