Newest warming huts at The Forks include work by artists from Scotland, Hong Kong, as well as Manitoba

Six designs have made their way from sketchbooks onto Winnipeg's river trail, as artists from around the world unveiled the latest warming huts at The Forks this week.

Adding new structures has been an annual tradition at the national historic site, where the Red and Assiniboine rivers meet, for the past 15 years. But the installations go beyond being solely shelter from Winnipeg's cold, and also serve as interactive art exhibits loaded with meaning.

"These huts are made by people, and they are for people to explore and enjoy, revel in, delight in," said Zach Peters, the communications and marketing manager for The Forks.

This season's new huts were built by design teams from Manitoba and abroad, and include three designs selected from more than 140 submissions to the annual design contest hosted by The Forks.

Among them is Prairie Castle, a tower-like warming hut by Scotland's Nick Green and Greig Pirrie that draws inspiration from grain elevators. It features rectangular shapes that wrap the tower in a display of colourful patterns.

The structure was built to include features borrowed from rugged ancient castles, including small offset windows and an archway door to the hut, referencing the designers' homeland.

"It's a little bit of us and a little bit of Manitoba [in] one beautiful shape," said Pirrie, a graphic designer.

Scotland's Nick Green and Greig Pirrie drew inspiration from grain elevators to build Prairie Castle, one of three new huts selected from an open-submission process that received over 140 applications. (Jaison Empson/CBC)

The structure was assembled on Thursday beside the canopied skating rink at The Forks. Hints of colour from the outside are drawn through its stained glass windows, contrasting with a dark blue paint inside to create a "more relaxing, kind of sheltered" feeling, Pirrie said.

The other two winners for the open-submission process are Wrong Turn designed by Oklahoma's Christopher Loofs, Jordan Loofs, and Kaci Marshall, and Pom Pom by Hong Kong's Haoran Deng and Bicen Song.

Another of the six new huts was picked from a contest involving Manitoba schools. The winner this year was The Present, a gift-box shaped installation created by Grade 10 students at the Exchange Met School in Winnipeg.

As in past years, students from the University of Manitoba's faculty of architecture built another of the new warming huts. Prototype Home, a single-person transitional housing unit, was created in tandem with the outreach organization St. Boniface Street Links, which works to help homeless people in Winnipeg.

The other new hut, already standing on the Nestaweya river trail, is Rosemary Skool, designed by invited artists Jaimie Isaac and Suzanne Morrissette, co-directors of the roving Rosemary Gallery (named for their grandmothers, Rose Morrissette and Mary Courchene).

Jaimie Isaac and Suzanne Morrissette designed Rosemary Skool, a structure built in the form of a birchbark basket using snow and bricks of river clay. It's among the newest warming huts at The Forks in Winnipeg. (Jaison Empson/CBC)

The hut takes the form of a birchbark basket, built using snow and bricks of clay sourced from deep underground — materials that will go back to the river when the melt comes, the artists say.

"We wanted to create a space that would be ephemeral in nature and an evolution … following climate and the environment," Isaac said. "[It's] a place that's only going to be here for three months, if we're lucky."

Keeping with the warming hut's concept that birchbark baskets are a carrier of traditional knowledge, the installation will be a hub for programming, including artist workshops, a community feast and performances.

"It's been a really great experience from concept to realization," Isaac said.

Some of the warming huts unveiled in past winters were brought back this year, with the structures remaining on the river trail until the melt begins, Peters said.

After that, they'll be pulled on land and placed near the canopy skating rink, where they'll remain until the skating season ends.