Cold comfort

How do you design a building for a hostile environment that is constantly on the move? Jonathan Glancey on the architects who are conquering Antarctica
Halley VI concept design, by Hopkins Architects
Ice folly... Hopkins Architects' concept for Halley VI, one of the three shortlisted designs for the British Antarctic Survey's research station. Photo: Jenny Stevens Public domain

The Brunt Ice Shelf, Antarctica, is not a place most architects would choose to build. Floating off the Weddell Sea, 10,000 miles from the UK, this titanic 100km sheet of ice is one almighty iceberg factory. Frequently and dangerously breaking apart, blanketed by snow and only occasionally warmer than freezing, it is a challenging place to live and work. Not that many people do. During the 10 winter months, when it is dark for 55 consecutive days and nights, the staff at the British Antarctic Survey's Halley V Research Station numbers just 16.

The first BAS station, founded here in 1956, was crushed by snow. Halleys II, III and IV met much the same fate. Halley V, a 50-tonne movable hut mounted on stilts jacked up a little bit higher each year as the snows do their best to smother it, is reaching the end of its brief working life. It might, in any case, float away by 2010 as the ice surrounding it cracks and splits into yet more icebergs. So Halley VI is on the way, a £19m government-funded project to be designed by one of three construction teams led by well-practised architects and engineers. These are Lifschutz Davidson with Buro Happold, FaberMaunsell and Hugh Broughton, and Hopkins Architects with Expedition Engineers.

The three teams were shortlisted last year from 86 entrants to an international design competition run by the BAS and Royal Institute of British Architects. Members of each of the three teams will journey out to the Brunt Ice Shelf this month to consider how best their ideas might be realised. The final choice for the designer of this flag-waving project will be made in September, and the station opened in 2008.

Traditionally, there has been no real architecture in Antarctica. It is only really possible to build for two months of the year, with pre-fabricated components being dragged across ice and snow. Most buildings clinging, like emperor penguins, to this vast and forbidding land mass are simple huts - timber in Captain Scott's day, steel today. They are designed to withstand brutal weather and to keep their inhabitants alive. None is pretty, yet all, set in stunning landscapes under unspoilt skies and painted with the southern lights, are picturesque, if not quite sublime.

Remarkably, especially after a particularly savage storm this summer, Captain Scott's 1911 cabin at Cape Evans on Ross Island survives. I visited it a few years ago; the cabin was in such good condition that had Scott, Wilson, Oates, Ponting, Cherry-Garrard or "Birdie" Bowers walked in, it would have seemed entirely natural: the Antarctic climate preserves even as it destroys. Ironically, there is probably no healthier place to be on earth, as long as you have dry, weatherproof clothes and the right food. Scott and his expedition had neither; and they faced freak weather conditions that froze the polar team to death.

There have been at least 100 polar stations constructed in the Antarctic since 1904. Today, there are 87, owned and more or less permanently occupied, by scientists from 27 countries. Scott's cabin is the most romantic, while the most messily spectacular is the US McMurdo Station (pop 1,100) at Hut Point Peninsula, Ross Island, comprising some 100 buildings, including dormitories labelled Hotel California and the Mammoth Mountain Inn, bars, a gym and a bowling alley. McMurdo Sound is built on snow and ice-covered volcanic rock.

The difficulties faced by those designing, living and building Halley VI are different. The key problem is the fact that the Brunt Ice Shelf is continuously on the move. Even though the ice here is between 100 and 150m deep, the ground is uncertain, so conventional foundations are useless. Nor can a building here be a permanent monument to the architectural ego, as it too will be replaced by Halley VII within 20 years or so. And who, penguins aside, will ever get to stand outside Halley VI for long enough to admire its subtle design and award-winning looks? One of the key conditions of the competition brief was that the building should have a minimal impact on the Antarctic landscape, a requirement of the Antarctic Treaty's Environmental Protocol. The station must be designed to minimise the amount of fossil fuels consumed and greenhouse gases produced, as well as maximise energy efficiency and the amount of power produced from renewable energy resources.

Halley VI will certainly not be an extreme southerly art gallery or museum devoted to memorable polar expeditions; it will be a science lab and observatory, including accommodation to keep its staff sane, safe and content during the darkest, coldest winters. The Halley stations have been located on this wobbly site because of its ideal setting for taking meteorological, glaciological, seismological and astronomical sitings and measurements. Over the years, these have been used to calculate, estimate or otherwise predict such variables as ozone depletion, atmospheric pollution, rises in sea levels and climate change. This is where the hole in the ozone layer was discovered in the 1980s. Built elsewhere, on more certain ground, Halley VI might last longer, but it would not be able to provide the same level and variety of scientific data.

So what have the architects come up with? Competition entry concepts included space-station-like modular capsules, transportable pods on skis and a building that can "walk". A design from the team led by Richard Rogers included a "penguin's eye" perspective of their building, which was rather thoughtful. In the event, the panel selected Buro Happold and Lifschutz Davidson for their idea of a linked space station-style structure on jackable legs. Judges were impressed by "the thought given to the living space and how staff would have quiet, private areas as well as community space. Special attention has been given to construction, maintenance, dealing with the annual build-up of snow, and how the station can be relocated".

They chose FaberMaunsell and Hugh Broughton Architects for their "strong architectural design. The modular approach enables units to be linked together to form a station that can accommodate user requirements and be easily relocated." It looks like some giant ice-bug. The depth of thought given to the construction phase particularly impressed the panel.

And they picked Hopkins Architects and Expedition Engineers as the third of their shortlisted teams because their "walking buildings" demonstrated an "innovative approach to relocating the structures". The panel "reflected on the challenges to be overcome in realising the design, but considered the overall concept to be achievable. The team has taken care in matching the sustainability requirements outlined in user documents and how new materials can be introduced to Antarctica."

Forty years ago, the Archigram architect Ron Herron designed a walking city - on paper. The idea was that if its citizens felt like it, the whole city could get up and walk to a new location - a lovely idea, turned into a practical one in the Hopkins-Expedition proposal. The Antarctic building, in search of a sound new site, might justifiably say to those who lived inside it:"I am just going outside, and may be some time."

It is, at this stage, impossible to pick a clear winner. All three design teams need to visit the site, talk to BAS staff on duty in the Antarctic and revise their designs once they they have the information needed to create a realistic as well as a special building. To date, Buro Happold and Lifschutz Davidson have presented the most striking illustrations of their proposal. Their Halley VI is seen in the eye of a winter storm under a sky lit eerily by a bewitching aurora; it seems less a machine than some warm-blooded creature offering succour.

This is how so many of us see and feel about the Antarctic: theatrical, cinematic, mean, moody and life-threatening. It is also a beautiful if challenging place to be, and vital to our understanding of the planet and our effect upon it. It deserves better buildings than have been here in the past, even though few people outside the tight world of Antarctic scientists, and the penguins, will ever get to see them.

· The Halley VI Design Exhibition is at Gallery 2, Royal Institute of British Architects, London W1, until Saturday. Details: 020-7580 5533.