X-analysis of ICEHOTEL and Boyhood

I have chosen to analyze and compare the ICEHOTEL and the film “Boyhood” by Richard Linklater. The reason I chose these two projects is that they are two completely different projects, both aiming to create an experience and tell a story that exceeds any expectations of the audience.

Creating a new unique hotel and art exhibition every year is an enormous undertaking. Art sculptures and architecture are nothing the other alike and it’s all made out of natural snow, ice and “snis”. “Snis are snow + ice; ice particles from the Torne River mixed with air. “Snis” resembles snow as it is insulating and white, but structurally stronger than clean snow and therefore a good building material”. Both are one-of-a-kind projects where ICEHOTEL is an annual project whilst Boyhood is a movie that casts the life of a six-year-old boy over the next 12 years.

The production of Boyhood began in 2002 with the overall objective to make a film about growing up. The project begun without a completed script. Initially, there was just basic plot points and the ending written. Linklater chose to develop the script throughout the whole production, writing the next year’s part of the movie after watching and analyzing the previous year’s footage. I find it very interesting that Linklater also involved all major actors in the writing process by incorporating their live experiences into their character’s stories to make the overall story more credible. This artistic methodology by Linklater characterize a incrementally and iteratively process which means they are working staggered on a schedule and that the work and plans continuously are evaluated and revised. This means that they were constantly going back and forth among the phases of a project stated by Ramroth.

Even though the construction of the ICEHOTEL doesn’t starts until October, planning and preparations are an ongoing process all year around. Not only maintaining of the national river Torne, the area where the ice is being harvested, but also to store 4 000 tons of ice that was harvested the previous winter in big warehouses onsite. Compared to Boyhood, there’s no doubt that the project of ICEHOTEL is on a more time limit schedule due to it’s season specific, it opens to the public in December and it usually stays open until the melt starts in April. For me, the phases in this project are more critical to its outcome as they rely on each other in a completely different way and there is limited opportunities to go back for rescheduling and rethinking.

There is no doubt that these two projects require enormously planning. Both projects are different in terms of life-cycle and budget but there are also similarities in limitations in terms of resources like manpower and time. Either of these projects wouldn’t be possible to execute without a clear vision combined with great management.

For those of you that are more interested, below are links to a short film with some great footages of the source of everything at the Icehotel, the Torne River, and to the trailer of Boyhood.

Link to the film about ICEHOTEL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4rQWw6qmC0

Link to the trailer of Boyhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys-mbHXyWX4

8 thoughts on “X-analysis of ICEHOTEL and Boyhood”

  1. I really like how you mentioned that the production of Boyhood is a reiterative process and linking it back to Ramroth’s book! In fact, I feel that even the ICE Hotel could be an iterative design because every year they would definitely improve the design and the user experience to make that particular year Ice Hotel much more better than the last one!

  2. Hej Kristoffer, Can you add links to the original posts on OSS of the two projects?

    Wow, your selected pair of projects might be the most diverse I’ve seen so far…:)
    I’m still not sure what the most prominent connecting feature would be… in relation to time (and planning constraints), one is so very linear, and the other so very cyclical.

    If you were to use a single word to connect the two projects, what would it be?

    Thanks for introducing the concept of “snis” to me. I found https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snis (sorry guys, it’s in Swedish…) which points to an article (also in Swedish) at http://www.destinationkunskap.se/uppbyggnad.html. But I can’t find any information about snis architecture from a structural engineering point – perhaps you could probe this a bit deeper?

    This is interesting: “to store 4 000 tons of ice that was harvested the previous winter in big warehouses onsite” which indicates the material is “old snow”. How old can snow get?

  3. I find this comparison between ICE Hotel and Boyhood very interesting! I wouldn’t call it ‘diverse’ but rather I see the similarity of “unknowable result” that encouraged you to put these two projects for the essay. I do agree that they are both one-of-a-kind and harder to replicate, with Boyhood not having a fixed timeframe or rather an unidentified “result”. Whereas ICE Hotel has to be built within the seasonal constraint.

    To sort of answer Prof’s above-mentioned question: These two projects share the same limitation/problem of “the future time” as they are dependent on them. The success of these projects varies because of it.

    I also thoroughly enjoyed this bit – “they were constantly going back and forth among the phases of a project stated by Ramroth.” so great job on including project management text as well!

  4. Hey Kristoffer! I was really surprised by your choice of projects for comparison as like you said, they were really different! I do agree with you when you mentioned that the “phases in this project are more critical to its outcome”, but I guess the Ice hotel would have more opportunities to have their rescheduling and rethinking done – but in the next year’s event, while Boyhood was more of a one shot project that had no turning back!

  5. Hi Kristoffer! I like that you took a different path and choose two projects that are really diverse. I liked that you mentioned that, “ICEHOTEL is on a more time limit schedule due to it’s season specific, it opens to the public in December and it usually stays open until the melt starts in April.”

    It is great that you picked out on these details that affected the project in a huge manner.

  6. Hi, you bring up the issue that has to be taken into consideration. These two projects require enormously planning. Both projects are different in terms of life-cycle and budget. The ICE hotel can only be implemented within a season and BOYHOOD has longer execution time. It would be good to know the cost of these two projects

  7. An interesting analyze and comparison between two completely different kinds of projects. I agree on what Kamarule already pointed out, that the Ice Hotel project could be seen as an iterative design since it is constantly reconstructed and improved.
    You described the Boyhoods planning to be fluidly constructed along the projects development. This is something that theoretically shouldn’t be done, though its necessary in this case if the movie should develop accordingly to the actors’ life.

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