Design

Instead of Plowing Snow, What If We Shaped It Into Fun Climbing Mountains or Dunes?

Two designers have an inventive idea for how cities could transform snow removal.
Natalya Egon / Noel Turgeon

For winter-weather lovers, a good-sized snowfall is a blessing that doesn't come often enough. Thus it can be a bit sad when municipalities work swiftly to get rid of the white stuff, shoving it into gutters and hauling it to vacant lots to melt in isolation.

But two designers from Chicago have a plan to rejigger urban snow removal and prolong the wonderment of a winter storm. Natalya Egon and Noel Turgeon propose that cities select areas in which no plowing is allowed. Then they would have municipal snow-hauling vehicles transfer their loads into these protected zones, where people and machines would shape the frosty stuff into monumental structures: mini-mountains to climb and ski on, flat mesas offering elevated urban views, rolling dunes as pleasing on the eye as ivory-colored ocean swells. (The above image depicts wandering glaciers in Manhattan's Washington Square Park.)