City starts building ice cave in Zaryadye

Mos.ru. reported that the Moskomarkhitectura approved the ice cave design in Zaryadye Park. The artificial «glacier» will occupy an area of 220 square meters. It will be located in a separate pavilion in the northern part of the park. Inside the cave there will be tunnels with arches and columns covered with rime.

This attraction site will be very similar to real natural caves and at the same time it will have an impressive artistic form. The installation authors are Alexander Ponomarev, the Antarctic Biennale’s ideologist and commissioner, and Alexey Kozyr Architectural Studio. The interior of the pavilion is being designed by Timur Bashkaev Architectural Bureau (ABTB) that won the competition for the concept of interior of «Media center», «Ice cave» and «Conservation Embassy».

The temperature inside the ice tunnels will not rise above minus five degrees and will not fall below minus 12 degrees. A powerful freezer consisting of LP turbine-25 pipes will be installed there to create artificial ice; the same mechanism is used in refrigerated rooms and ice arenas. Equipment providing cool air and reagents will be set under the «glacier». The pipe-refrigerators will go through the whole cave ensuring uniform freezing of the «glacier» surface.

It’s planned to set media-screens into transparent ice cubes to show videos about formation of crystals, change of water states and various forms of ice that exist in our nature.

«The artificial ice cave will have the same structure as real natural sites. But that’s not only imitation. Visitors will appreciate that Zaryadye’s ice cave has a complex architectural design made in unique artistic manner,» the Chief Architect of Moscow Sergey Kuznetsov said.

The museum halls—Centre of Arctic and Antarctic—will perform educational functions; visitors will learn about work of polar explorers, natural environment of the North and its inhabitants. In addition to this, at the entrance they will be offered specially designed «Papanin» clothes—warm overalls with snap fasteners, named after Ivan Papanin, the leading Arctic explorer.

Next to the cave, a large media screen will be installed, which will show documentaries about the nature of ice.