Scott Base Redevelopment

New Zealand’s Antarctic station on Ross Island has one of the coldest, harshest climates on Earth, with long winters of total darkness and temperatures that drop below -40˚C. For four months of the year however, during the brief polar summer, it is home to a community of up to 100 scientists, carrying out world-leading environmental protection and climate studies. Until now, these researchers have lived and worked in a collection of 12 buildings, developed piecemeal in the 1970s and 80s, but which have come to the end of their effective life. 

Antarctica New Zealand has commissioned a team with expertise in cold climate design to redevelop the site, replacing the existing station with a fully self-sufficient, low-impact, off-grid base. There will be three interconnected, two-storey buildings: one for living, one for laboratories and offices, and one for support facilities. WSP is the civil and structural engineer, which means it has to work out how to construct these elevated structures on a bed of permafrost in one of the most remote corners of the world. 

“In terms of timings and logistics, this is a project like no other,” says Jamie Lester, technical principal, building structures at WSP. “It’s a very short construction season with only a four-month window between November and February, when there is enough daylight and it is not so cold.” For speed and ease of construction, the base will be a modular structure, with as much as possible prefabricated and assembled before being shipped from New Zealand. “The sea isn’t navigable until January – all of the materials for the following year have to be delivered then so building can start promptly the next summer.” 

The foundations will present the biggest structural challenge because of the way the permafrost freezes and thaws, calling for non-standard designs to cope with the different conditions. “We’re looking at a range of options, including building on concrete pads anchored to the permafrost, and a method using ground refrigeration that’s used a lot in Canada,” says Lester. “Ice is quite elastic, and therefore very difficult to excavate with a machine. It will have to be done using drill and blast techniques and is very labour-intensive.”  

There’s also the problem of actually working on site in the coldest climate on Earth. “When I was there in November it was -5˚C, but felt more like -19˚C with the wind chill,” says Lester. “The atmosphere is also extremely dry, which affects our choice of materials for the project. In particular shrinkage of timber is a big problem, so any wood used will have to be specially treated.”  

Climate change is another complicating factor, as the station has a design life of at least 50 years. “We have to take it into account when deciding on the depth and type of foundations in case the active layer of permafrost changes.” The team have also considered seismic activity – historically the risk is very low in this area, but if the ice cap starts to melt, local tectonic movement could be affected. “Climate change and natural hazards are difficult to predict, and we’re on a constant learning curve,” says Lester. “But that’s what makes this project so interesting.” 

In this episode of WSP’s Engineering Matters podcast, we look at what it takes to build a research facility in Earth’s most inhospitable environment,  Antarctica.