Wooden cabins in Antarctica are replaced by futuristic stations

Halley VI Station, project: Faber Maunsell and Hugh Broughton Architects, 2005

London - For decades, simple wooden huts served as the only human dwellings in Antarctica. In recent years, however, countries have been competing to see who can construct a more ostentatious research station in the coldest, driest, and windiest place on the planet. The new Brazilian station Comandante Ferraz began construction after the original was destroyed by fire in 2012. The dark, elegant building, with its futuristic design, is intended to house up to 65 people and is expected to be completed in 2018.

Brazil is investing $100,000 in the new station, which is being built for it by a Chinese company. Despite the fact that this long, low complex, located on a small island about 1,000 kilometers from the southernmost point of South America, will hardly be seen by anyone other than its staff. The area is outside the routes of regular air connections and marine paths. And if anyone were to reach the Brazilian station in Antarctica, they would still not be allowed inside - the base will be closed to the public.

However, Brazil is far from being the only country investing huge sums in the construction of architecturally interesting Antarctic stations in recent years. India opened its station Bháratí in 2013, which features a similarly modern design. It was constructed from 134 prefabricated containers to facilitate transport and assembly, but this is not noticeable from the outside.

The very next year, South Korea opened its station Jang Bogo, a magnificent three-winged model raised on steel-reinforced blocks, where up to 60 people can work.

“Antarctic stations have become the equivalent of embassies on ice,” says Anne-Marie Brady, editor-in-chief of Polar Journal and author of the book China as a Polar Power. "They are a display of individual countries' interests in Antarctica,” the BBC news site quoted her as saying.

These interests can be purely scientific. However, in a few decades, the moratorium on mineral resource exploration will expire, and unless it is extended, every country operating in Antarctica wants to be as well-prepared as possible for that moment. Constructing a striking building on the ice is currently akin to raising a flag, as former explorers did.

The first permanent structure in Antarctica was a stone hut built on the South Orkney Islands in March 1903 by 33 men from a Scottish Antarctic expedition. The leader of the expedition grandly named it Omond House, after the meteorologist from Edinburgh, Robert Traill Omond. Today, the hut is maintained by the Argentine government as part of the Orcadas base.

For many years, which witnessed heroic polar expeditions led by Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, and Douglas Mawson, no other structures were built in Antarctica apart from wooden huts.

Then came a period of relative construction boom, spurred by the International Geophysical Year (1957-1958). The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 suspended all territorial claims, but many countries began to strengthen their presence on the white continent in other ways, such as building stations. From this period also comes the extensive American research station McMurdo, the largest settlement in Antarctica with a summer population of about 1,200 people.

A significant issue for all constructions in Antarctica is the accumulating and drifting snow that inundates and crushes buildings. The first British station Halley, established in 1956, was abandoned after 12 years because life inside was "like being in a submarine." Britain then built several more stations, but they were all consumed by snow or became victims of the movements of the ice shelf on which they stood.

The current Halley VI station is the first relocatable research station in Antarctica. Its eight interconnected modules - resembling colorful railway cars - rest on hydraulic legs mounted on giant eight-meter skis. Thus, the modules can be fairly easily pulled to another location with the help of bulldozers and reconnected. This feature will prove useful now as the British polar base needs to move about 20 kilometers further inland due to an expanding crack in the ice.

The interior of the Halley VI station is very tasteful and comfortable. Various shades of red, blue, and green used in the furnishings compensate for the lack of color in the surrounding landscape. Tall windows allow plenty of light in - except during the dark winter months. A spiral staircase clad in aromatic Lebanese cedar, which aims to stimulate the often-overlooked lack of olfactory stimuli in the Antarctic environment, where otherwise scents are almost completely absent, turns behind the bar.

The problem of snow accumulation at research stations was solved by the Republic of South Africa as one of the first. Its SANAE IV base, opened in 1997, stands on stilts, allowing the wind to blow snow under the building.

Germany chose the same, even improved concept for its Neumayer III base, commissioned in 2009. Sixteen hydraulic pillars allow the entire two-story building to be raised by about a meter each year. The pillars are then placed on a new solid snow foundation.

The Belgian Princess Elisabeth Station boasts that it is the first Antarctic scientific station with zero emissions. Since its opening in 2009, it has operated exclusively on solar and wind power and has no heating despite its location. It utilizes waste heat generated by electrical systems and human activity, and the perfect insulation of the walls reduces heat loss to almost zero.