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ponds, canals). Ice house can be build in stone, with elements in 
wood, but smaller objects can be found almost in stone. Stone 
constructions are made mostly in dry stone walling system, with 
corbelling or they are vaulted, roofed with straw or reed (leaves), 
clay tiles or stone plates.
Architecture of ice houses can be several, especially their elevations 
outside, with characteristics of the environment, and in local materials 
(slopy thached roofs, almost flat roofs in stone plates, circular shapes 
or leaned to the hill or to other objects). The simplest objects are real 
cylinders with spyral staircases down to the bottom, but professional 
built objects have the bodies narrower at the bottom, are made of 
double walls,  with airation and straining canals, corbelled balkonies 
and sofisticated transport gears for digging out the ice.
Examples of ice houses: Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, 
Slovenia. Informative material consists sketches, plans, photos 
and reconstructions of some typical ice houses.
Instalation into the environment shows all the possibilities: ice 
house could be hidden, deep under the fortress (Monza), leaned to 
the house, in distance from the homestead – but on the sight control, 
or far at the source of the ice, high on the mountains. Location 
depends of the source, and of  the traffic possibilities (roads, paths: 
rack waggons, mules), but distance depends on reach to the final user.
The names of ice houses depend on locations, languages, local 
slangs. They are based on the words for snow and ice: neve (neviere 
in Castillian, also in Italian), ghiaccio, led (ghiacciaia Italian, 
ledenica Slovene), or the well (pou de sa neu Catalonian), ice and 
eis (ice house in English, eishaus in German),  cellar (eiskeller 
German, ijskelder in Dutch).
Situation today shows all the possibilities of the state, age and the 
use: original state, destroyed or ruined, use as the cellar (the closest 
use to the origin), renovation and restauration, use as cultural 
object (museum), or just as the memory only (In Hungary there are 
a lot of guesthouses named as ‘jegverem’, ice houses). This is just 
understood: the roof collapsed in time, and the hole is dangerous: 
filling up is the simplest possibility to avoid the risks.
Bibliography of ice houses is pretty rich, but very rare shows the 
system and comparison between several solutions in function, 
materials, construction and in shape. 
Ice house as an architectural object is undoubtedly very interesting 
object, built in local materials, in local styles, full of individual 
contribution of the builders, but every time in the most usable mode. 
Today is out of use, it is only the reminder of our past, but because 
of its rich culture would be preserved for next generations.
A kozolec (plural kozolci: unproper translation into English is 
‘hayrack’ – because the original use of kozolec was drying and 
storing cereals or corn, only in the last years it is hay) is a free-
standing, open, wooden and always covered device for drying and 
storage. While wheat was formerly stored and dried in it, it is now 
precise look on plans could expose open fire places, communal 
rooms and some private rooms. We could set a hypothesis that houses 
were built not for single persons but for families or some kind of 
community. Narrow streets in-between the houses with one square 
at the entrance expose that this community had restricted access 
or exit of the settlement. Here the idea is the opposite: controlling 
the community. Narrow streets are helpful for controlling the traffic 
of people on the streets; they could reduce the speed of moving the 
people. Those are the benefits for security.
The general question is: house units provide a quality of life with 
fire places and streets are provide quality of mass controlling for 
the ruler. This is some kind of ‘must to do’ symbiosis.
In Austro-Hungarian Monarchy those working settlements were 
organized the same as described before. This formula helped both 
groups: the owners and the workers. In terms of economy this could 
be named: win - win combination. Here the story of architecture 
and spatial organization starts.
ZUPANČIČ, Domen. Workers dwellings in Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy : Trzic Slovenia. V: ÇATAK, Neslihan (ur.), DUYAN, 
Efe (ur.). ARCHTHEO ‘13 : conference proceedings, December 
4-6 2013, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, [Istanbul], Creativity, 
autonomy, function in architecture. Istanbul: Mimar Sinan Güzel 
Sanatlar Üniversitesi Yayinlari, cop. 2013, str. 36-42, ilustr. 
[COBISS.SI-ID 2955908] 
Historical background of the ice houses is well known from the 
3rd Millennium BC. The oldest objects can be found in Iran, made 
of the stone and clay in circular shape of stepped cone.Water is 
the main material for maintaining the proper temperature: it has 
three aggregations – water, steam and ice.
Needs for chilling the goods and producing ice are close connected 
to the life of mankind: low temperature lasts the food quality, and 
the quick cooling stops deterioration of the milk. On the other 
hand, ice can be used for cooling itself as well as for direct use, 
icecream for instant or frape. Icecream is not the invention of our 
days.
Appearance of ice houses can be found in the natural underground 
caves, and as built objects, using the air streams, fresh water, 
or isolation facilities of the ground materials for retardation of 
losing temperature.  Economy of the ice production can be: for 
individual use, as craftmanship and for industrial use.
Function of the ice house is keeping the cool air inside: but the 
basic activity for this is collecting the ice. It can be gathered in 
free nature, collected with the sort of funnels, in the basins nearby, 
from the far ponds, or can be ‘produced’ with beating the snow.
Objects for ice houses are built almost under the ground: some 
of them can be seen as the roof only, or as the monument (the 
pyramide, for instance). Elements of the objects are as follows: roof, 
body (sunk into the ground), entrances and outbuildings (as basins, 
Borut Juvanec
TWO SQUARES AND ONE KOZOLEC
ISIS Congress 
BJ member of ISIS Congress Scientific Committee
Hersonisos, Crete Grčija, September 2013
Borut Juvanec
LES GLACIERES DE SLOVENIE
La foire de la glace 
Musee archeologic de Le Van, 
Mazaugues, Marseilles, February 2013