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While Chicago grappled with single-digit—and colder—temperatures in mid-February, 13 students from the Master of Tall Buildings and Vertical Urbanism (M.TBVU.) program at Illinois Institute of Technology’s College of Architecture were inspired to create a one-of-a-kind colorful ice tower.  

A dozen years ago, Antony Wood, M.TBVU. program director and a professor in practice in the College of Architecture, realized a fun family winter tradition by freezing water in milk carton bricks and building an igloo and pyramid in his yard. The Wood family’s latest construction swapped the rectangle carton bricks with dome-shaped ice frozen in water balloons to create a bulb-igloo. 

“I decided to move the project to the IIT campus this year to take it up a scale, to teach the Master of Tall Buildings and Vertical Urbanism students something around the logistics of construction, and to get as high as we could,” Wood says. 

About 280 hours of freezing and stacking went into building the colorful tower, across the 14 people involved. Dozens of balloons filled with food coloring and water froze over several days before the students spent two days building. When sunlight floods through each of the colored ice-bricks, it dazzles anyone willing to look through the tower. 

A slurry of water and snow acted as mortar as the rings of bulbous bricks were stacked. Students had to erect scaffolding on the final day. The frigid air froze the structure solid, and it stood for days before the cold snap ended. 

“Many thanks to the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat for sponsoring the materials and, of course, to the M.TBVU. students themselves, for working tirelessly alongside me to build something of note,” Wood says. 

Students who helped build the tower include Aída Alvarado, Akkil Ibrahim Shanavaz, Anastasiya Kovylina, Fatemeh khajeh Dehaghani, Jack Archer, Jayraj Mistry, Jillian Oligschlaeger, Jumana Abu-Elreish, Jyot Mankad, Kamila Igambergenova, Kristin LaSorsa, Mariana Penaloza, and Suriana Rosas-Mozo.