SINGAPORE – Two intrepid artists from Singapore travelled to Jukkasjarvi, a village in Sweden 200km north of the Arctic Circle, and braved extreme conditions to build a hotel room for the famed Icehotel 33.

Edmund Chan Jian Xiong and Tan Tai Tien arrived in Sweden on Nov 30 and had to complete construction of their proposed design before the hotel opened on Dec 16 for the winter season.

Icehotel has been in operation since 1989 and this is currently its 33rd edition. 

Their design, called Dreams Of Pencils, was inspired by pencils.

“I spent a long time thinking about possible designs. While I was holding my pencil and thinking, it suddenly occurred to me that I was holding a very important design tool,” Chan, 33, says in an e-mail.

The pencil motif appears as pillars and benches carved out of ice. The bed is a pencil box, with a headboard of large ice pencils. And a pattern based on the hexagon – the cross-section of a pencil – is carved into the frozen arched ceiling.

Dreams Of Pencils is one of 12 art suites that were created for Icehotel 33 by a total of 24 artists from around the world whose proposals were selected. While it is not a competition, the artists did receive an honorarium and a copyright fee.

Chan says: “It was a struggle getting used to being in the freezing cold and getting our hands and feet numb. On the first few days, the temperature was manageable at around minus 11 deg C. Subsequently, the temperature dropped as low as minus 31 deg C.”