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A team from McGill University, Montréal are exploring the use of ice as a rapid prototyping medium. Their project, New Architecture of Phase Change: Computer-Assisted Ice Construction focuses on computer-controlled techniques for constructing objects at varying scales out of ice.
Currently, the practical applications of this project include commercial and industrial part modeling, and construction for the ice-tourism industry. For instance, small-scale ice models represent economical alternatives to intricate 3D models of architectural objects, be they scale models of buildings, site models, or building details. Presently, casting techniques are being investigated in order to produce high-quality metal copies from ice originals. In the long term, inhabitable, environmentally-friendly structures will be built at the architectural scale using computer-assisted techniques, thus increasing the level of automation in an industry that is currently very labour intensive.
