Polestar opens a Frozen electric vehicle store in Finland
Polestar has raised the coolness of electric cars to a new level by building a commercial space made entirely of snow.
Located in northern Finland in Rovaniemi, just a few kilometers from the Arctic Circle, the building is 12 meters high, it took three weeks to build and serves as a showroom Polestar 2 electric car until February 26.
Inside, in addition to the Polestar 2, there are ice sculptures representing the car’s wheels, brake discs and suspension. Like Polestar’s 130 or so retail locations, which are usually found in city centers, visitors to the arctic snow region can configure their own Polestar 2, arrange a test drive and make a purchase online.
Refreshingly, the staff at Polestar are not paid commission, so no one is trying to get you to sign on the dotted line. Instead, visitors are told and then left to make their own decisions at home.
The “snow farm” sitting in Kansalaistor and in connection with Arctic Design Week is built from 3,000 cubic meters of snow, which was transported by electric car from nearby Ounasvaara. When the facility closes in late February, the building will be demolished and the snow will be returned to the resort.
The walls of the building are two meters thick and inside there is a reflective lighting panel under the dome roof. While this shape is impressive in itself, it also reveals how the cube was constructed.
First, the molds made of wood and steel frame are built for the interior and exterior walls. These molds are then filled with snow, which is compressed to almost the same density as ice, which weighs 800 kg (1,760 lbs) per square meter.
The semi-circular formwork is blown with air to create a domed inner roof that gives the building strength and stays in place when the formwork is deflated and removed. The exterior of the domed roof is then covered with more snow to create the final cube shape, and finally the wooden forms are removed, leaving a free-standing snow structure.
Polestar tells how the inside of the cube would usually be a little warmer than the outside, but during the visit to Finland the weather was exceptionally mild. This made the interior cooler, but stepping inside still meant a welcome respite from the freezing wild cold of the Finnish winter.
Outside, a group of electric car chargers emerge from the snow block, ready to charge the batteries of the Polestar cars used for test drives.
The building was designed by architects from Polestar (the Swedish headquarters of the company is also a cube) and it was built by Finnish company Frozen Innovation.
“The purpose of Arctic Design Week is to highlight arctic and responsible design. We are happy that this message was brought to Rovaniemi in the form of Snow Space and that the work turned out so spectacular,” said Taina Torvela, the film’s producer. Arctic Design Week and Rovaniemi city planning manager.