Families can expect a music affair once Winnipeg's Warming Huts open.

On Thursday morning, people gathered in The Forks' market to get a sneak peek at this year's chosen winners for Warming Huts.

"It has become a tradition to come to The Forks and experience this world-class art and architecture. it is a way to celebrate and embrace our sometimes easy, sometimes tough, Winnipeg winters," CEO and President Sara Stasiuk says.

Out of 100 entries from 27 different countries, Peter Hargraves, the principal at Sputnik Architecture unveiled the winners for the twelfth time. The principal says his office, which has been working with The Forks on warming huts since its beginnings, pray for cold weather each year. 

"I apologize to the people who suffer from the results of our prayers," Hargraves says.

board turningThe Warming Huts will be located on the River Trail and in Arctic Glacier Winter Park.

This year's exhibit title is An Art and Architecture Competition On Ice: Whimsy Abounds. Construction will begin in the third week of January. Teams from Norway, Brazil, and China will be coming and creating their proposed Warming Huts this winter.

"They are more than just an attraction. They have very quickly become an annual tradition for the thousands of visitors who flock to The Forks each winter," Martin Duhoux, the president of Manitoba Association of Architects, says.

Martin DuhouxDuhoux says warming huts make the "outdoors more enjoyable and the cold months more bearable here in Manitoba." 

A "crazy" hut will be heard down the river thanks to Al Simmons and his son Karl. The duo is creating a hut filled with durable instruments that children can play while wearing mittens and skates.

"I was asked to do a performance, two performances, here. We were deciding what we thought it would be and I thought it would be storytelling with sound effects," Simmons says. "The ideas are still being formulated."

He says it, like the name of his hut, sounds crazy. Simmons says to expects sounds like "ding, dong, aoogah, bap, slap, and rattles" to come out of the hut that is "warm to our hearts."

Dean Mimi Locher of the University of Manitoba's architecture department says their students will expand on last year's contribution. Locker says they are creating A Warmer Place.

"The hands-on experience of collaboratively researching and designing, and then seeing the design transform from paper to build from, is a highly unique and significant educational activity," Locher says.

She says last year they identified who was most in need of warmth and are working with the Thunderbird House on their hut

Frontier School Division is building a hut inspired by two students who made a backyard playhouse. This hut, called BLOSSOMS, will focus on storytelling and learning.