A playful structure to create a snow-bound hut by Weiss Architecture & Urbanism — the firm of Daniels Faculty Instructor and alumnus Kevin Weiss (BArch 1989; MUD 2002) — was chosen as the 2015 winner for the Winnipeg Warming Huts competition. Selected from more than a hundred submissions from around the world, Weiss’s entry stands out as light-hearted and colourful. Entitled “The Hole Idea – Now in Technicolor,” the design recalls Looney Tunes animations and plays with the childhood memory of constructing snow forts.

“There is nothing like a little bit of humour to warm up a cold winter’s day,” says architect Kevin Weiss. Rather than looking at the canons of architecture for inspiration, Weiss and colleague Sophie Tremblay turned to the 1955 cartoon classic “The Hole Idea” and imagined colourful holes enlivening the banks of the river.

“Sophie grew up in Montreal and I am from the Prairies,” says Weiss. “We both have great memories of the amazing snow forts we built as kids. In addition to the light-hearted cartoon reference, the project is really a continuation of that idea of play we had as children.” 

Consulting with Punch Clock Metal Works, the architects devised a structure that will be constructed of brightly painted intersecting metal culverts, which are then covered with snow. The tubes will project out to make the colourful holes on the surface of the snow and will provide the hut interior with light and views.

About the design of the competition entry:

The portable hole first developed by Prof. Calvin Q. Calculus in the 1955 Looney Tunes animation, “The Hole Idea” and later sold by the Acme Company— has a troubled history. Almost right from inception, the ominous, mobile void was put to use for evil purposes— first as an effective enabler for a vicious crime spree and later as a means to capture the American desert fowl Geococcyx californianus or as it is commonly known as, “the Roadrunner.” It is important to note that the later use always ended up with the direct opposite result than that of the intended; which is likely why the portable hole is no longer commercially available.

This proposal takes as a starting point the portable hole, and by utilizing modern paint technologies, adds color. The resultant 1’–6” diameter holes— which can be located anywhere along the snowy banks of the Assiniboine or Red River — are resistant to being co-opted by evil forces (including the greyness of soul-sucking foul weather) due to the sheer cheeriness of the palette of introduced color. Further, a large, bright and yellow 8’ diameter hole is horizontally located in a 25’ long snow drift and provides skaters a warm and sheltering burrow in the snowy river bank.