For a town that is extremely summer-centric, Grand Haven still seems to also have an innate attraction towards the winter season. I was initially intrigued by the image of the Grand Haven lighthouse covered in sheets of ice, but that curiosity later manifested into an exploration on how I can transfer that sensation into a designed experience.

Can a built environment emulate the power that nature emits? Should it embrace nature? Or perhaps do both. Such questions came to the immediate forefront. With art house/ice house, I propose to harness the energy of the cold climate to create a spectacle and attraction for the community to enjoy from the exterior while harboring the energy and warmth of the community in the interior.

On the exterior, the skin of the building will grow thick as the winter month's progress and later sheds its weight when spring arrives. Coincidentally, this cyclical progression coincides inversely to the gains of a tree and its losses of leaves. Matter is never lost; it is only transferred and transformed into a different material. This progression of build up and decrease will continue year in and year out along with celebration of the coming and going of the seasons. The skin of the building will record the passing of time by continuing to weather and age as time passes.

Perhaps the community will embrace the spectacle that the built form provides and cease to neglect winter as only a time of recluse within bounded walls and venture out and enjoy what the season offer.