14 DAY TRIAL // People have been known to do some really crazy things while in college, but students at the Eindhoven University of Technology pretty much take the cake – cherry on top, sugar glazing, cream filling and all – when it comes to finding wacky ways to pass the time.
Before everybody leaves their computer and goes grab a slice of cake, here is what this piece of news is all about: later this year, a group of students at said university in The Netherlands plan to travel to Finland and build an ice basilica.
The basilica will measure as much as 40 meters (a little over 131 feet) in height, and its architecture will be based on that of Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, the Eindhoven University of Technology students told the press in an interview.
For comparison purposes, an image of the ice basilica these young architecture enthusiasts wish to build in Finland is available above. A photo of the Sagrada Familia, on the other hand, is just 1-2 seconds of scrolling down away.
Truth be told, the students will not use ice alone to complete this project. On the contrary, Phys Org tells us that the material they wish to use is called pykrete. For those a tad confused, “pykrete” is a fancy word for ice mixed with sawdust or other wood fibers.
The students are so confident in their ability to make an ice-based replica of the Sagrada Familia that they say they will manage to complete the project in just three weeks' time. They want to get to work in late December, and say their basilica will open on January 17, 2015.
Talking to the press, project leader Arno Pronk said that he and his team could have chosen to erect an ice structure a whole lot bigger than the 40-meter (131-foot) high basilica they have in mind, but that they settled on a replica of the Sagrada Familia because they thought this project to be more challenging.
“We could have just decided to build another, even larger, dome. But in building terms the Sagrada Familia is a much bigger challenge. And of course it's very recognizable,” Arno Pronk explained in a statement.
Furthermore, “The structures in the work of the architect Gaudí are scientifically the most interesting. And although the ice building will have the same shape as the Sagrada Familia, it won't have the same decorative exterior.”
Interestingly enough, it appears that these students are no strangers to using pykrete to make impressive architectural structures. Thus, it was just last year that the students first got to play with this material and ended up creating a dome whose diameter measured 30 meters (about 98.4 feet).
