Students from Eindhoven University of Technology, in collaboration with students from the Summa College in Eindhoven, made a pentagonal ‘Eiffel tower’ made of sprayed on ice and cellulose.

Located in Harbin, in northern China near Siberia, the pentagonal structure has a similar structure to the Eiffel tower. It is made with a mixture of ice and cellulose, sprayed onto a base structure, made of rope and tubes.

Built under the supervision of Dr Arno Pronk of TU Eindhoven, the 14-metre (46-foot) tall structure is a prototype of a 40-metre (141-foot) tall ice tower planned for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. If achieved, the Netherlands will have the record of the tallest ice tower.

The prototype won first prize in a competition. Other participants in this ice building competition included John Ore (Cambridge), with a Leonardo polyhedron (Leonardo’s death was 500 years ago), Kent State University with an ice Pringle, University of Lapland with a ‘blob’, and the Harbin institute of Technology and other Chinese universities with curved surfaces in ice.

For other versions of the TU Eindhoven’s ice structures, click here and here.

Photos: Rien Boonstoppel