After staging a hugely successful exhibition of dinosaur fossils last year, Cityplaza is currently hosting a recreation of the Harbin Ice Lantern Festival. Stephen Spurr, director and general manager of Swire Properties, explains some of the logistical challenges of bringing a world of ice to a Hong Kong shopping mall
Last year's dinosaur fossils exhibition was something that really caught the imagination of the general public. The logistics of the Harbin Ice Lantern Festival are probably as terrifying as they were with million-year-old dinosaurs. There are 200 tonnes of ice and the venue itself is a frozen world where we keep a constant temperature of minus 5 degrees Celsius.
When we were setting up, and during the seven days it took our 22 artists and engineers and sculptors to create the 16 exhibits, the temperature had to go down to minus 12 to minus 16 degrees - frostbite levels. Of course we were very conscious of people suffering from hypothermia and other difficulties. Fortunately none of that occurred.
In the seven-day period when they were doing the carving, they were working 24 hours a day. We have tremendous constraints in the shopping centre because we are surrounded by residential development.
It has been a wonderful cultural exchange. The Harbiners have been exposed to China's most cosmopolitan city coming from one of China's most traditional areas. It has been something of a cultural eye-opener for them, but we have enjoyed being with them and working with them. They have also proved themselves to be marvellous artists.
The highest sculpture is 4.5 metres high and 12 metres wide. That has used something in the order of 300 cubic feet of ice, which is just gargantuan. The ice slide is the second largest sculpture and it is something that the children have really taken to. It is 14 metres long and 2.2 metres high at its top-most point.
