The building blocks of sculpture

As previously posted in the blog, the team were commissioned to build a Chocomel tower structure in Utrecht’s town square. This ice, as with most of the Hamiltons’ ice was prepared under strictly controlled conditions in their UK studio and carefully shipped to the Netherlands. Local ice is only used in extremely rare circumstances. The team then followed with their tools on the Eurostar and joined up with a group of builders who had already gained some experience working with ice.

This project was as much about building as sculpture. When building a structure, it’s important to have the right people for the job and builders by trade can often adapt their skills to suit a variety of materials as the basic principles remain the same. This group of builders had already trained with the Hamiltons and took to their task very quickly, working through the night to construct the tower for the early morning reveal.

It’s often the case that large builds like this will happen in the wee hours of the morning in order to keep the public away from the site and to ensure a smooth promotional launch for the morning newspapers and news programmes. Obviously, it’s not just a builder’s job. When the construction finishes, the sculptors are on hand to carve out the intricate shapes and finer detail.

See the Chocomel construction on Facebook