MAINTAINING THE PERFECT TEMPERATURE FOR FROZEN ART
“Vietnamese Ice Sculptures Wow Ho Chi Minh City,” announced a local news headline in June 2023. It heralded the opening of a spectacular exhibit at HCMC’s Dam Sen Cultural Park, where 1,000 metric tons of ice have been crafted into replicas of more than 20 iconic architectural masterpieces from around the world. These include the Eiffel Tower, the Colosseum, the Statue of Liberty, and more local landmarks, such as the Ancient Citadel of Hue and the One Pillar Pagoda. They are atmospherically lit by 2,000 colorful LED lights.
The Ice Sculpture Garden, which cost around $1.2M to create, has become a summer fixture in the city’s cultural calendar over the past decade, and its opening is much anticipated by local residents. The sculptures are each carved from a single ice block weighing around 220lb by artisans from the Chinese city of Harbin, which is famed for its own Ice Festival. They are assisted by more than 100 Vietnamese engineers and workmen, who labor tirelessly in temperatures ranging from 0C to -13C to create this miraculous ice world.
Once it’s opened to the public, the temperature of the Ice Sculpture Garden is regulated at between 5C and 14C, depending on the number of visitors. Guests are given warm clothing as they enter and find plenty to entertain them: in addition to the imposing sculptures, they can enjoy a ride on a reindeer sleigh, try out an igloo, or take a slide on a slippery bridge. , and are then free to marvel at these frozen works of art.
“As soon as I arrived, I was mesmerized; it surpassed my imagination,” was the verdict of one early visitor to the exhibit. “All of the ice sculptures are meticulously crafted.”
“I thought it would be a little bit chilly, but it’s actually freezing in here!” another laughed.
So how is the Ice Sculpture Garden’s temperature—in the middle of a city where the mercury rarely drops below 68C— maintained at the level of a crisp winter’s day in Scandinavia? If visitors look upwards, they can see the Güntner name written on six Cubic VARIO Air Coolers.
The Cubic VARIO Air Coolers offer a perfect cooling solution for this challenge. In addition to offering optimal air and sound level properties, its fans are maintenance-free and durable, and the unit is energy efficient. All of these factors were important for refrigeration contractors Le Quoc Refrigeration Co. when planning the cooling system for the Ice Sculpture Garden.
“For a project like this, the quality of the refrigeration equipment is crucial to ensure stable operation and system reliability,” says Le Quoc Refrigeration director Tran Quoc Tam. “Güntner’s advanced technology and quality manufacturing ensured that we would have the highest possible quality refrigeration system.”
Pham Huu Ky, technical manager and lead for end user Dam Sen Cultural Park, congratulated the technical team at Le Quoc for their efforts in creating what he called “an outstanding project”.
In addition to the Cubic VARIO Air Coolers in the main exhibition hall, two Güntner Cubic COMPACT Air Coolers are also deployed in the rooms where visitors enter and exit the exhibit. The aim here is to maintain a temperature of 23C and to prevent moisture from getting into the Ice Sculpture Garden.
The exhibit is set to keep wowing its visitors for some time to come.