Czech south pole research base

FAST VUT - Faculty of Civil Engineering, Brno University of Technology, Department of Architecture

Project idea

The recent Czech research base is becoming more and more inconvenient due to its capacity, so the replacement is the current topic. My goal was to create a place that would be in harmony with antarctic surroundings and that would provide a warm shelter for the Czech research crew.

My purpose was to not blemish this beautiful piece of land. I made this station look like something with a natural origin, that is placed into this environment. The object is in coherence with its surroundings and makes the impression of a rock pebble that fell from the sky, or was brought by a moving iceberg and could be called a wandering boulder. Nevertheless, to someone, it could look like a UFO, to which the station should be similar in a technological way.

I tried to make the interior of this building with legacy to the first local cabins from the beginning of Antarctic expeditions. To achieve this, I am using organic materials, mostly wood, to put this high-tech building close to this kind of dwelling. This type of buildings - cabins - are connected to polar lands in general, from historic to worldwide circumstances.

Project description

The new research base will increase the capacity from 15 crew members up to 38 (50) people. This station represents a warm shelter in a wild freezing land. It offers everything the crew need and also it makes their lives there much friendlier.

Technical information

This station, like every other, is made from modular panels that have to be pre-fabricated and shipped there. The construction system allows a quick and dry montage. The whole construction is elevated above surface level, therefore, the station will not freeze from the ground. The station is created by a stable core on an oval platform, which is on the order of columns. These are the main points for the „bridge“ construction of the station. Suspended living shells are wrapped around the central core. The sun absorbing shell is a sandwich construction with an insulation part from FOAMGLAS that is used for its great physical properties. Roof slope provides space under it, which serves for distribution of installations in oval parts as well as in narrow parts, where the installations channels connect the left living part to the right research part of the polar base.
The entrance is oriented towards sea and iceberg stream, from which the group takes drinkable water. Living rooms are oriented to the south to be free from direct sunlight. On the other side, labs and workplaces are oriented to the north to provide good working conditions. The research crew will be staying there during the polar day, and because of it, I let the sun shine to all living spaces. That leads to saving energy. Other objects are warehouses, which contain wind power plants. Capacity backups, emergency modules, warehouses for trash and diesel aggregate. Garage for zodiac boats is located next to the sea.
The entrance is situated towards the sea. There is a garage cut into the mass of the building with safe manipulation space and stairs to the base. At first, we go through the filter room, then to the lockers with clothes dryers. After that, we enter the main hall, where we can enter the headquarters, the living part or the research part. In the middle, there is a utility room with all the rooms that are bound to this room. Next to the utility room, there is a kitchen, hygiene rooms and the main wet lab. This lab, as well as the main common room, are in the most interesting places in the building, half-circle rooms, that are two floors tall and provide great conditions for social and scientific activities. I chose this compact form to prevent heat losses from the interior.
The shape of this building is made with the purpose of maximizing living space and minimalizing corridors. The vertical shape of the building goes from one-storey to two-storey. Spaces in between are for instalations. The second floor - the headquarters is situated in the middle to provide management of the research base.
The shape of this building is designed to be aerodynamic to create better acoustic conditions in the interior. The windows form comes from the construction system of truss frames that carry cells around the stable core. The facade is made of a number of panels that are connected together and fixed into this truss frame construction. The black facade creates a heat accumulation shell, that absorbs sunshine and matches with the color of the solar panels on the roof of the research base. The wall next to the garage secures this entrance from wind and snow. It also carries the name of the station that shines red in bad weather to help the crew on a mission to find their shelter.
Rooms - option of double the capacity -> two-story beds, also to make different space, by made only one two-story bed. The wall in an angle reflects the sun into the living space. The room is getting bigger towards the window. The walls and ceilings are made of wooden acoustic panels. The floor is made of ice-blue lino. The furniture is veneered from bleached oak, the same veneer like on the acoustic panels.
Another main task was to create a great living atmosphere for the people that will be staying there. So I decided to place a relax zone into this base. It consist of a sauna and a relax area. I am using the heat from the waste incinerator for the sauna. In these conditions, it is a kind of holiday even to take a shower. That is why the relax area is conected to the showers so that the crew can go there and enjoy this little joy. So my plan is that, they will have some garbage at the base and it has to be incinerated, so if they time it well and go to the sauna first, then take a cold shower and after that they just lay there and enjoy the moment with a great view at the most magnificent nature on this planet.
The common room is the most interesting space in the whole base. This room is for meetings, mostly social, from playing games to playing music. I made this space to be very transaparent. It serves many functions - dinning room, boardroom and common room. It is also transparent in a different way. This oval room can be divided into three segments, so the crew can separate from one another in diferent activities. The segments are split by moving walls, which can hide into a gap on the wall on the side. The exact same room is situated on the other side of the building but serves as a main wet lab. This lab can also be divided into three smaller labs in order to provide a better environment to concentrate on work. These two rooms are almost two-story high and are illuminated by skylights in the roof which is carried by a specific truss. Space is also devided by colors and materials by the same radial angles. I create a continual stripe, when a bright sky, through the entrance to the common hall is poured out into the floor. There are black continual stripes and wood that crystalize from the centre.

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