Overview
Two Chicago-based designers have come up with an entertaining and sustainable solution to their city's heavy winter snowfall. Noel Turgeon and Natalya Egon's Second Hinterlands Project proposes to turn Chicago's snow into a playground for young and old alike.
The project suggests that instead of spending large amounts of money removing the snow, certain areas could be left snow covered, and the remaining snow strategically relocated to this uncleared area. In the process a unique new landscape would be created for the locals to interact with and enjoy until the weather starts to thaw. Think giant snow mountains, snow forts, tunnels and other delightful things.
Whilst it has basically zero implications for Australia, both designers live in a place where heavy snowfall has an inevitably transformative quality upon the cityscape and upon its citizens' movements, and they want to make this transformation a positive one. "The experience of the city is altered overnight; for a short while the city transforms from a system of streets, transportation networks, landmarks, and nodes into a landscape of concealment and exposed void, dramatically simplified yet overtly dynamic," says Egon on her website.
The project won the 2013 competition “COLDSCAPES: New Visions for Cold Weather Cities" organised by Kent State University's Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC).
