IceFire

1984-1988  Burlington, VT
Waterfront Linkages Charette
Principal: Michael Wisniewski       

For decades Burlington was isolated from its waterfront by industrial sites and rail yards.  As the waterfront began to be reclaimed people began to talk about how to link the downtown with the waterfront and how to draw people down in the cold, bleak, winter.  This was all pre Community Boathouse and Waterfront Park.  I had been thinking about this for awhile and when a community charette was organized, IceFire, playing a little on a Robert Frost poem, was my submittal.

IceFire, inspired by  temporary villages of ice fishing shacks that appear on the frozen lake, proposes a community skating rink at the foot of College St. when the harbor freezes over.  A series of urns on sleds are formed into a square, the ice is maintained for skating and fires are lit in the urns.  The fins act as insulation to keep the ice from melting.  From uptown people see a warm, flickering glow that invites them down where they can warm themselves when not skating.  Once the 'public infrastructure' was in place we hoped that people might sell hot chocolate and snacks from small ice fishing huts, thus creating a true temporary city, with public and private aspects, on the ice.