











Ice Maze, designed by Andreas Mede, from Woodside, California, is one of three winning warming hut designs for 2016 at The Forks. (HANDOUT)

WINNIPEG — A group of architects are celebrating their winning designs in The Forks’ warming huts competition for the upcoming year.

The best entries in Warming Huts v.2016: An Art + Architecture Completion on Ice were announced Thursday, as chosen by a blind jury.

Three winning huts were chosen, including Temple, designed by Kirill Bair and Daria Lisitsyna from Russia; Ice Maze, designed by Andreas Mede, from Woodside, California; and Shelterbelt, designed by Robert B Trempe Jr., from Lincoln, Nebraska.

“This year we saw over 160 entries from all across the globe including Estonia, Iran, India and Bangladesh,” said Paul Jordan, CEO of The Forks Renewal Corporation. “The competition attracted fantastic designs and narrowing it down to the top three was difficult for the jury.”

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”4″ gal_title=”Warming Huts 2016″]

Aside from the winners, the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Architecture is back for a sixth year with two huts to be placed onto the ice, Basket and Fabrigami.

The Forks has also invited Canadian throat singer Tanya Tagaq to design a warming hut in conjunction with Sputnik Architecture.

Visitors to the icy surface will also see a new design to RAW:almond, the popular pop-up restaurant sitting on the corner of the Red and Assiniboine rivers. A separate competition was held in mid-August to come up with the 2016 design.

Aside from the warming huts, The Forks is launching a new Winter Wind Derby. The goal? To propel you down the Red River Mutual Trail using a “flying” contraption.

“If Winnipeggers can relate to anything it’s winter and wind,” added Jordan. “How many times have you gone skating and figured if you had a sail, the wind could carry you the whole way? This competition gets you thinking creatively to embrace our Windy City instead of fear it.”

The human-powered designs must be built and ready to go by February 5, 2016. Leave your internal combustion engines, motors or rocket packs at home.

Construction on the warming huts will begin in early January, with the goal of having them on the river by later that month, weather permitting.