Students construct igloo outside of Siebel Center

Champaign-Urbana in winter can feel more like the Arctic than Central Illinois. And for anyone who passed by the Siebel Center the week before the start of the Spring 2010semester, there was another reason beside the weather to confuse Champaign County with the Frozen North.

An igloo.

The approximately 8 ft x 8 ft igloo was the work of ECE graduate student Kevin Lin and 9other students from varying departments, including several from Computer Science.

“My friends and I knew a snowstorm was coming, and one of my friends just said, ‘Let’s build an igloo.’ It was just something none of us had ever done before--sort of a once in a lifetime thing-- and we just thought it could be fun,” said Lin.

Following a snowstorm that blanketed the area with powder, Lin and his friends set to work on the igloo. Several of the other people in the group had watched videos on YouTube detailing how to construct an igloo with plastic trash buckets, but these videos only proved marginally helpful

“None of us had built an igloo before so we had to improvise bit by bit. We had such powdery snow, unlike the people on YouTube, so we had to spray our bricks to freeze them together,” said Lin.

Eventually, the team developed a system for forming bricks with the buckets and spraying the powdery snow to pack it together, slowly moving up layer by layer.  All told, the on again off again construction lasted 15 hours; three hours on Friday and 12 hours on Saturday.

After a long and cold two days, the team completed the longest and trickiest part of construction, closing up the top of the structure, which required patiently packing and reinforcing bricks in a dome like shape. To mark their accomplishment, the team autographed a sign in the igloo reading “19100 SC,” an engineering joke meant to translate to “Igloo Siebel Center.” They also managed to light the inside of the igloo with a multicolored flashlight, giving the structure a deep, blood-red glow. And when the igloo started to attract the attention of passers-by, they left a guest book for visitors to sign and share their thoughts.

“I went by it a few times before it melted, and I saw a lot of families and some faculty checking it out and a lot of kids playing inside of it. And that was really cool,” said Lin. “When people brought their families and their little kids, it was a really positive experience all around. I don’t know if I ever want to spend another 12 hours out in the cold building another one, but I’m very glad we built this one.”

The igloo eventually lasted five days before melting away.

In addition to Lin, other participants in building the igloo included Computer Science grad students  Ellick Chan, Brett Daniel, Alejandro Gutierrez, Yun Young Lee, Jeff Overbey, and Lucas Cook; General Engineering undergraduate Jeff Davis; Statistics  grad student Nathan Hirtz; and Chicago attorney Jeremy Kerman.