At the foot of the Great Wall at Jinshanling, design studio ELSE has made Ice Garden from fleece, water and the cold of a northern Chinese winter. The installation follows a forested slope beside a hiking trail and lasts only as long as the temperature allows.
The walls do not follow a plan drawn in advance. Their route was set by the trees already standing on the slope. Where trunks grow close together, the ice closes in and forms small rooms. Where the forest opens, the walls part to leave a passage. Walking through, visitors start to read how the forest is arranged, something easy to miss on an ordinary hike.
The larger reference sits on the ridge above. The Great Wall at Jinshanling crosses the mountains as one continuous line, built to endure. Ice Garden takes up that idea of a line drawn through the landscape and makes it from a material that belongs to a single season. Seen within sight of each other, stone and ice set permanence against something that will not survive the spring.
Built with the weather
Construction depended as much on the climate as on the team. Agricultural fleece was hung between the trees and sprayed with water. In the dry, subzero air the water froze in thin layers on both sides of the fabric, adding to the shell with each pass. Wind, humidity and temperature shaped the final surface, so no two walls set in quite the same way.
The fleece gives the ice something to hold on to, while the ice almost hides the fabric. What remains is a pale, frosted surface that reads as ice rather than textile and catches the low winter sun.
The forest, slightly out of focus
Inside the installation, light does most of the work. Sun passes through layers of ice and branches, and the shadows of trees and visitors fall across the walls and blur into one another. The forest behind each wall flattens into a soft background, and depth and distance become harder to judge.
That small shift changes how the site is used. A walk that would usually pass without notice slows down. The spacing of the trunks, the angle of the light and the stillness of the winter forest come forward. ELSE adds very little to the site, yet the familiar woods begin to look new.
Made to melt
Ice Garden was never meant to last. As temperatures rise, direct sun and wind speed up sublimation. The walls crack with faint sounds of splitting, then soften and fall. The water returns to the ground and the forest is left as it was found.
Here the project runs in the opposite direction from the wall on the ridge. It accepts that the weather will take it back, and lets a space appear for one winter before it dissolves into the landscape.
Design: ELSE / @design_by_else
Photography: Tree Studio
Location: Aranya Golden Mountain, Jinshanling, China
