Antarctica’s newest research station holds a lesson for snowy cities

It has been two weeks since Winter Storm Fern swept through the United States, and many cities are still busy digging themselves out of waist-high snow mountains. A brand-new building in Antarctica—where temperatures average 14 degrees Fahrenheit along the coast—might offer some useful insights for a more efficient approach.

Perched on the southern edge of Adelaide, an island on the Antarctica Peninsula, the Discovery Building spans two stories and nearly 50,000 square feet. It is clad in highly insulated metal composite panels and topped with a mono-pitch roof that slopes in just one direction, so snow slides right off instead of piling up.

Most notably: it sports an innovative feature called a wind deflector, which protrudes on the leeward edge of the building (the one sheltered from the prevailing wind) and prevents snow from piling up right next to the building. So far, the system has most commonly been used above doors to clear snow that would otherwise fall adjacent to the building, but the architects say it’s never been used at this scale before. The feature could change the way we design buildings for harsh climates.

Design for extreme conditions

The Discovery Building is located within Rothera Research Station—a center for marine and atmospheric studies and the UK’s largest research facility in Antarctica. (The station is famously served by one of the most advanced, icebreaking polar research vessels in the world, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which itself carries the autonomous underwater vehicle Boaty McBoatface, of internet fame.)

For years, the research station was spread across nine separate buildings, meaning researchers often had to navigate between them in blizzard conditions. Now, all functions are consolidated under one (very unique) roof, in a building that acts as the station’s nerve center.

The Discovery Building was designed by British firm Hugh Broughton Architects, which, over the past decade, has a gained a reputation for designing buildings that exist in extreme conditions. In 2013, the firm completed Halley VI, a raised building that sits on a floating ice shelf. Mounted on hydraulic legs with retractable skis, the station was specifically designed to be relocated if the ice shelf showed signs of breaking off, which it did in 2017. The entire base was successfully moved 14 miles inland.

Halley VI, which went on to earn over a dozen awards, led to several commissions in other extreme, isolated environments, including a health center in the world’s most remote island, Tristan de Cunha, and Juan Carlos 1, a radial modular research base also on the Antarctic Peninsula. The firm is also currently designing a new building for the Australian Antarctic Division at Davis Station in East Antarctica.

What keeps bringing Broughton back to such punishing conditions? “The briefs are interesting and challenging,” he says of the requirements and constraints such projects often demand.

Over the years, Broughton has gained an understanding of the challenges that come with harsh climate of the Antarctic, but every site, he says, continues to bring with it its own set of complications and peculiarities, whether those are topographical, climate-related, or simply differences in the way the building is used.

“I must admit, when we first started on Halley VI, I thought ‘is there any chance for a cookie cutter approach here?’ But there most definitely isn’t,” Broughton says. “Every site has its own idiosyncratic, environmental, but also cultural and social challenges.”

The wind as a resource

In the case of the Discovery Building at Rothera, which took six years to build due to the limited construction season (October-March), wind was one of the primary challenges. Lifting the building on stilts, like the architects did at Halley VI, would have helped the wind blow underneath the building and chase the snow away from it. But the building’s requirements—which called for workshops and science offices, a heating and power plant, a health facility, and stations that could serve as a launchpad for expeditions in the field—made it too heavy to be lifted. The need for constant vehicle access to stage expeditions also meant the building had to sit on the ground. The architects had to find another way to prevent snow from building up.

To understand snow behavior in those particular windy conditions, Broughton’s team worked with Canadian engineering agency RWDI, which conducted detailed wind and snow modeling studies. It was RWDI that introduced Broughton to wind deflectors, which look a bit like angled metal fins and function like aerofoils in Formula One cars, redirecting airflow to work with the building rather than against it.

By channeling wind down the facade and along the ground, the deflector transforms what would normally be a liability into an asset that actively clears snow. This means the building remains accessible, but also that snow doesn’t pile up right up against the facade, which could lead to damage. In a climate where blizzards can last for days, a wind deflector reduces the amount of effort needed to clear the snow, as well as the fuel required to power the snow plows. “There’s both a resource and a carbon cost,” says Broughton.

Lessons from Antarctica

There are currently 70 permanent research stations dotted around Antarctica, representing 29 countries from every continent on Earth. Many of these stations were built in the late 1950s, after the explosion of polar research that took place during the International Geophysical Year—an 18-month global scientific collaboration that involved more than 60 countries conducting coordinated research on Earth.

After an initial renovation period in the ’80s, many of these buildings have been reaching the end of their lifespan. This, combined with an increased emphasis on climate change research, is leading to what Broughton calls a construction boom on the Antarctic Peninsula. “There’s also a geopolitical aspect to it,” he says. “Everybody wants to have a presence.” Antarctica is not under the sovereignty of any single country and is regarded as the “international continent.”

Over the past few decades, scientists have become better at understanding how wind blows and snow drifts around a building, and as a result, Broughton’s team has become better at responding to these challenges. He thinks these lessons can carry over to the urbanized world.

As climate change reinforces the strength and frequency of extreme weather events—like Fern in the U.S., and Storm Goretti in Europe—cities are scrambling to mobilize resources and clear snow. (New York City, for example, converted garbage trucks into snowplows.)

Broughton believes that buildings where winters are harsh and winds are strong could benefit from relatively low-cost systems like wind deflectors, but he says there are other lessons architects can borrow from Antarctica. These include a focus on thermal efficiency by favoring air-tight envelopes instead of relying on heating, as well as efficient planning that means you’re achieving more with less built space.

“There is a whole raft of principles that are applied to these buildings by absolute necessity that could be applied more by choice in a more temperate environment,” he says.