A couple of days ago, I talked about IceSpace, which was a large temporary ice attraction built in London in 2006. While I was getting my facts straight about IceSpace, I found some pictures on Flickr.com by Adam-lee Sara, who worked there while it was open. He’s generously agreed to share some of his photos as well as a bit of info about the place. Check out the gallery of his photos!

    Despite that it was only open for three weeks back in 2006, it’s not hard to find info and some photos of IceSpace. It featured a gallery of ice art, an ice lounge, an ice skating rink, and regular live entertainment as well as impressive lighting, sound, and video displays. Adult admission to the place was £21 (which is about $39 in todays dollars, but the conversion might have been a little more favorable two years ago.) The whole place was a little over 300 ft long and the ice was kept below freezing by linked refrigerated tents. Official capacity of the place was 500 or 300 (or possibly less), depending on the source. The attendance goals were 400 or 300 guests per hour, depending on the source. The allowed admission times were one hour or 30 minutes (or even all day according to one interpretation), again, depending on the source. It looks like a lot of things were changing in those three weeks and supposedly even the venue’s arrangement and sculptures would change each day, making each repeat visit a unique experience.

    Adam-lee indicated that after the initial excitement, attendance fell off and it was pretty clear that the goals weren’t close to being met. He did say that the live performances were very good and that the place was pretty interesting to work at. I had happened to be in London while IceSpace was supposed to be open (for eight weeks, from the beginning of May until the end of June.) Unfortunately, by the time I got there, it had already closed and all I saw was an empty lot.

Some other items of interest:

    The “snow” on the floor of IceSpace (visible in some of the photos) was not snow, but something a bit like small packing peanuts.

    London was supposed to only be a first stop for IceSpace. After it ended in London in June, it was supposed to move on to Barcelona first, then back to London, and later Berlin. (I would speculate that the refrigerated tents used for IceSpace were iceculture’s “thigloo,” which I mentioned in an earlier post)

    According to Treehugger.com (yes, there really is a Treehugger.com), the slogan for IceSpace was: “Global Warming stole the Ice Age. We’re stealing it back!”

    Here’s a reviewer’s account of her visit to IceSpace.

Special thanks to Adam-lee for the use of his photos! The photos in this entry and in the gallery are © 2006 Adam-lee Sara and are used with permission.