Scientific Vs Architectural Opportunities in Antarctica: Ice Lab @ The Lighthouse, Glasgow |

At last year's Venice International Architecture Biennale a few architects came up with projects and ideas surrounding buildings, structures or research centres designed with extremely cold climates in mind. Ukraine for example presented the "Mirage Architecture Project", inspired to curator Alexander Ponomarev by a research expedition to the Ukrainian Academician Vernadsky research station in the Antarctic.

The project designed by architects Alexey Kozyr and Ilya Babak comprised two mobile structures, the Floating Personal Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art for Polar Zones. According to the project, during the summer navigation season, the buildings move from Europe to the Antarctic where they change their location and appearance like a Fata Morgana, enabling travellers, researchers and tourists to come into contact with works of art.

A recently opened exhibition at The Lighthouse in Glasgow looks at scientific research in the Antarctic from an architectural point of view. There may be no state of the art buildings designed with museums in mind, but "Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica" is equally intriguing since it is the first major (touring) exhibition exploring the architectural possibilities offered by living and working in extreme conditions in Antarctica.

Commissioned by the British Council and curated by the Arts Catalyst, "Ice Lab" mainly looks at the innovative structures built to host research laboratories where scientists, geologists, biologists, astronomers and meteorologists study the thickness of the ice, earthquake activity, gravity, climatic patterns, magnetism, oceans and solar activity, animal and plant life.

The coldest and windiest place on Earth, Antarctica has an extremely harsh climate, one of the main reasons why it is often compared to an alien landscape. It's only apt then for the Antarctic research stations included in this exhibition to look like futuristic buildings out of sci-fi films.

The exhibition features five designs for Antarctic research stations: the recently opened British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI, the first fully movable and relocatable polar research station in the world, designed by Hugh Broughton Architects and engineered by AECOM (UK); Antarctica's first zero-emission station – the aerodynamic stainless steel Princess Elisabeth Antarctic, conceived, designed, constructed and operated by the International Polar Foundation (Belgium); Bharati Research Station India’s third Antarctic research station by bof Architekten / IMS (Germany), a striking modernist structure made from 134 prefabricated shipping containers wrapped in a special aluminium case; Jang Bogo, by Space Group (South Korea), a triple-arm structure (according to the renderings featured in the exhibition) that will open in 2014, and Iceberg Living Station, a speculative design by MAP Architects (Denmark) for a future research station made entirely from ice. This structure remains among the most interesting ones since it doesn't employ ordinary construction materials, but ice, and suggests the use of caterpillar excavators to build it, therefore, once its purpose is served, it would melt leaving no trace.

The exhibition, featuring architectural drawings, models, photographs and films plus a light and audio show by the Glasgow-based visual artist Torsten Lauschmann, is also accompanied by a rich programme of events, film screenings and talks (check them out on The Lighthouse website). Fourth and fifth year architecture students should try not to miss the "Beyond the Real Workshop – A New Taxonomy of Representations" masterclass led by David A. Garcia of MAP Architects (2 October 2013
).

The first structure built on Antarctica was an Australian base that opened in 1911, and more than 50 scientific research stations were set up between July 1957 and December 1958 – the International Geophysical Year. The technogically advanced research centres featured in "Ice Lab" are radically different from the first ones built on Antarctica: while offering extraordinary opportunities to enhance scientific research, thanks to their innovative design they also pose new challenges from an architectural point of view.