Warming hut design winners unveiled at The Forks

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This article was published 29/11/2012 (4692 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A group of Winnipeg designers has beat out 90 entries from around the world in designing something we should be good at: warming huts.

The annual Forks warming hut design contest winner is a pioneer cabin called Hygge House, a Danish word meaning physically and socially cozy.

The warming hut, which is sawed in half and painted fluorescent yellow inside, was entered by local companies Plain Projects, Urbanink, and Pike Projects.

The local architects were picked by a blind jury with no background or knowledge on submitters. The local talent beat out entries from as distant as Tokyo, Moscow, Lisbon, Barcelona, Egypt, Columbia and Germany.

Peter Hargraves of Sputnik Architecture called the winning entry “a reproduction of Canadiana, the wilderness cottage.”

Hygge House, pronounced “hYOOguh,” and other contest entries should be up on The Forks ice skating trails by the third week of January.

Paul Jordan, chief operator officer of The Forks Renewal Corporation, said it’s looking good for a river trail this year but didn’t want to say anything more.

“I don’t want to jinx it,” he said.

The world’s longest river trail hasn’t been its normal self the last two years, when it was only three kilometres long.