Sapporo Snow Festival

Lasts Sapporo Snow Festival. Over the course of several days of this extraordinary event, over 2 million Japanese and foreign visitors will be able to see the exhibits created by sculptor artists.

Warsaw also has its place at the festival. In October last year, we hosted a team in our city that was developing technical documentation for the performance sculptures of monuments Fryderyk Chopin and the Palace on the Isle – Łazienki Królewskie.

Sapporo Snow Festival is an exhibition and competition of snow and ice sculptures, held annually since 1950 in Sapporo, Japan. The beginnings of the festival date back to 1950, when a few students erected 6 snow sculptures in Odori Park. In the following years, the festival grew and gained international fame, among others, thanks to the support of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, which from 1955 to 2005 made their barracks in the Makomanai district available for the largest monuments, which were made by the soldiers themselves. In addition to them, the sculptures are currently made by representatives of companies and associations, as well as volunteers. Snow for the festival is brought from the zone located in Ishikari Bay. The largest sculptures are over 15 m high and  several dozen meters wide, and their construction uses 500 five-ton trucks of snow.

The sculptures are placed along Dworcowa Street in the Susukino entertainment district and in Satorando Park.

Some of the works refer to current or upcoming cultural, sporting, economic and political events. Due to the next edition of the F. Chopin piano competition held every 5 years in Warsaw, the choice of sculpture was obvious.

The monument to the great Polish composer is accompanied by a sculpture of the Palace on the Isle in the Royal Łazienki Park.

We prepared the trip for our guests from Japan together with our members: Museum  Royal Łazienki, the Sofitel Victoria Hotel and the Fryderyk Chopin Museum in Warsaw. At the request of the Polish Embassy and ZOPOT in Tokyo, we hosted a team preparing documentation for the sculpted monuments.

Photos from the exhibition itself, as well as the preparations for it, can be seen below.