Episode 6 Transcript Extreme By Design: Hugh Broughton

Alok Jha (00.00) [Let me take you on a journey. To the coldest place on earth, and its last and greatest wilderness. On a voyage to Antarctica…]

Antarctica is the coldest, driest, windiest and highest continent. Its surrounding Southern Ocean is renowned for record-breaking waves, unchecked winds and perilous sea ice. But what does it take to design buildings where people can live, work – and even thrive –  in the world’s most extreme conditions? 

 

Our guest this week is world-renowned architect Hugh Broughton. In 2005 Hugh’s practice won an international competition to design the UK’s most southerly Antarctic research station – Halley VI. The modular elevated base was completed in 2012 and is the world’s first fully-relocatable polar research facility. Hugh’s practice has gone on to win a string of design competitions for remote projects and is now considered one of the world’s leading designers of research facilities in the Polar Regions. 

 

Hugh has won over 50 international awards for his designs. His work has been published around the world and has been featured in numerous exhibitions and on television and radio. He has lectured worldwide on the work of his practice, and regularly sits on award and competition juries. 

 

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Alok Jha (01.44) So Hugh, just take us through the sort of thinking behind designing and building structures in a place like Antarctica. I mean, what do you have to do as an architect at the beginning of a project like this that's maybe different to where a more traditional office building somewhere?

Hugh Broughton (02.00): I've gotta be careful how I answer that question ‘cause I need to maintain the myth that it's really difficult to design Antarctic research stations, don't I?

What we always do is, to be honest, what we would do with another project if we were asked to design it in a more temperate environment. We just try and find out as much about the requirements of the clients and as much about the environment as we possibly can, and as it happens, we're currently working with the Australian Antarctic division on some projects for them at, you know, reasonably early stages. So we've had to go through this kind of initiation process really very recently. 

 

And we start by trying to understand the constraints around the sites. So there's the extreme environment, the cold weather, there's the logistics challenge, ‘cause obviously Antarctica is very remote and very difficult to get to, and really only possible to bring materials and large numbers of people in during a brief summer period. 

 

But then when you are on the sites, there's the typical constraints that you'd find in any project of topography, but also a large number of environmental constraints. And when we say environmental, we're also talking about wildlife. So things like elephant seal haul out areas or nesting sites for Wilson petrel colonies – all, all sorts of things like that. Or it could be some rare moss that's growing on the site as well. So we have to understand all those constraints.

 

And then if we are building in, on a site of an existing station. Then we also need to get to grips with the science that's being conducted there because many of the scientific experiments have exclusion zones around them. There are some dark sky experiments where you don't want buildings that are emanating lots of light. There are others that don't deal well with vibration. There are some that need clear sight of the horizon, so you have to understand all those parameters as well to kind of, in essence give you the zone in which you can place buildings.

 

So it's a kind of process of understanding those constraints. And then on the other side is just sitting down with all the people who are gonna use those buildings and talking to them about their requirements now and how they see their requirements in the future. And I really do find that pretty amazingly interesting, particularly talking to the scientific community about how they see science in Antarctica developing in the future.  Of course there is gonna be fundamental change. We don't know the answers entirely about how that science will change, but we do know that things like automation are gonna become more and more important and they will have a big transformational effect on the way these research stations are designed in the future.

 

Alok Jha (04.50): Let's just dig into a little bit of the process of designing and building one of these things. You, you've kind of given us an overview. I just wonder, what about things like materials? What about things like logistics? These are all gonna be much harder and much more important to think about in a place like Antarctica because you're not gonna be able to just fix something very easily.

When you've designed something, how do you think about the sort of materials you build it out of? And then also the logistics of getting all that stuff to Antarctica and, and working with it. 

 

Hugh Broughton (05.21): Well, obviously we've got to choose materials which are gonna work well in the extreme low temperatures. We also try and design the buildings so that they can be assembled as quickly as possible, because you have such short seasons when people can be outside carrying out construction activities.

So we are looking for building skins, which are highly insulated, where we can achieve high levels of air tightness to minimise heat loss, as sort of regular gap so that the spaces inside can be easily reconfigured. 

 

There's also been a bit of a sea change, I think, in how we think about construction. In the old days, many more of the buildings tended to be delivered in either flat pack or even just in their constituent parts and then assembled on site. Whereas nowadays, we are looking more and more at opportunities to build more of the bases in their host country, wherever that may be, and then ship them almost as fully complete modules so that all they really need to be is essentially zipped up together. And then with the building services, the electrics, the ventilation, the heating just connected inside so that we can really minimise the environmental impact of construction activities.

 

So yeah, the logistics maybe is slightly different to the way people would approach projects in more temperate environments where the construction process evolves out of the design. Whereas in Antarctica, the construction process and the delivery and the logistics are key constituents in determining the design from the outset.

 

Alok Jha (07.00): Hugh, let's talk about one of your first projects in Antarctica. So the Halley base, for those who've never seen a picture of it, would you describe it for us?What it looks like and I'd love to know how you got to that point of designing it like it is.

Hugh Broughton (07.19): I think before describing the building, I might just give a bit of a description of the actual site. ‘Cause it's pretty extraordinary. So the site of Halley VI is on a floating ice shelf, the Brunt Ice Shelf, which is connected to the main continent of Antarctica, but it's where the ice has actually flowed off the main continent and is, essentially supported on the sea underneath. So it's fairly unique and very dynamic. It's moving out to sea at a rate of around 400 metres per annum and constantly runs the risk of breaking off as a giant iceberg. So there's a German station, Neumayer III, which is also built on an ice shelf, but Halley is the most dynamic site probably in Antarctica. 

So the design responds to that. So the station is made up of a series of modular buildings that are elevated up on legs. So there's a gap of four metres underneath them, and then each of those modules is connected to the other using flexible connectors like you get between train carriages. And then the modules are supported on legs, on giant skis, and the benefit of this is that if ever the ice shelf were to break up, the modules could be disconnected, like train carriages are disconnected from each other, and then they could be hauled on their skis to a safe location in land.

 

So yeah, elevated modular – most of the modules are the same, they're blue, and then there's one bigger one in the middle, which is the main living module, and that's on two stories and that's red. The blue modules are around 1,600 square foot inside, so the size of a sort of typical Terraced house in the UK. And then the bigger red module is about two or three times bigger than that.

 

Alok Jha (09.11): And I would encourage people to go and have a look at a picture of this. You can see easily on the internet, it kind of looks like a very large caterpillar that is sort of sitting on the ice, ready to move if things get dangerous.But it's actually a scientific research station. It's an incredible thing. So, was it always the case that when you were asked to design this space that it would be like this – it would be lifted up from the ground, it would be able to move, and all of that? Or did the idea of it being movable and manoeuvrable and all of that come some way during the process?

Hugh Broughton (09.46): Uh, no. Because it's Halley VI, and obviously that's, there's a clue in the name. There had been five previous incarnations and the first one was built in 1957, the International Geophysical year, and it was a very simple timber hut. Halley II was similar. And in both cases the snow falls at Halley and is also blown in from the main continent.

So the snow level rises by one to one and a half metres every year, and everything you leave on the surface gets buried. So Halleys I and II, the snow level rose and rose and rose, and eventually buried the buildings and eventually they had to evacuate them. So they built Halley III and IV as tunnels, which were meant to be buried. And then people lived under the ice, but it was a pretty unpleasant experience living under the ice.

 

And also the ice moves a bit like water. And so it imposed huge forces on these underground buildings. And as a result, they had a very short life. So Halley V was then built as an elevated building, but its legs were stuck in the ice.

 

So when the British Antarctic Survey prepared their brief for Halley VI, they recognized the history of the previous Halleys and they said, we've gotta do something about this. So we 

 

Alok Jha (11.05): They learnt their lesson? 

Hugh Broughton (11:06) Yeah, they learnt their lesson and they said, we need a building which can be relocatable. So that idea of relocation was absolutely embodied in those first requirements. So we came to the concept of skis and elevated buildings really quite quickly. 

Alok Jha (11.21): Had you ever built a movable building before? 

Hugh Broughton (11.23): Oh no. My only previous building I'd built before we started that project was a small building for girl guides in Wimbledon. 

Alok Jha (11.31): Perfect. That's a perfect preparation I think for this, it seems. 

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Alok Jha (11.48): Okay, so that's the sort of external side of things and the sort of practical side of things, which in itself is incredible. But when you're designing the inside of these buildings as well, what does that take? I mean, I expect that some of it is just dormitories and living quarters and desks and chairs and that kind of thing, but are there particular things that you can do within a building like this, that you have to think about when it comes to how people live in them? For example, it's dark for half of the year, so do you have particular lighting that you have to make sure that people stay happy and working? What other things do you do within the buildings to make people's lives a bit more comfortable?

Hugh Broughton (12.22): I mean, it's unbelievably cold and sometimes you get huge storms rolling in into these sites. So it's a very, very challenging environment to live in for nine months of the year, you're pretty much cut off from the rest of the world, so you are totally isolated and you're just living with a small team of sort of 15 to 20 people.

So there's some big psychological stresses that people working in the Antarctic face. So the interior design has a significant role to play in maintaining and hopefully even enhancing their wellbeing. So we look very carefully at the space planning within the buildings to provide places where people can come together as a community. And which support the idea of social interaction, but also places where people can be on their own to have a little bit of kind of me time. We design the corridors very carefully with places where they widen out so that as you are walking along, if you see someone you can pull off to the side, have a bit of a chat carry on.

 

We place the windows very carefully to give really good views onto the landscape. And if there are particular features, then we make a focal point out of those. During the winter, it's really important that the artificial lighting can simulate daylights, that you would get in a more temperate environment to try and help balance the amount of serotonin and melatonin in people's bloodstream to help them overcome seasonal affective disorder.

 

It's also really important that in the summer when you get 24 hour daylight, that you have really good blackout blinds. I was talking to a doctor at the Australian Antarctic division recently. He said to me that at their stations, the biggest problem that people face as a psychological stress is sleep deprivation.

 

So anything that one can do to enhance the bedroom environment, to make it comfortable to help people's sleep's important. But the –  it's amazing the numbers of deprivations, and one of them is just smell. There's often no wildlife of any kind whatsoever, so there's no natural smells whatsoever. So for example, at Halley VI, we introduced timbers into the interior design, which just give off a nice scent.

 

Just again, to just try and help some of that range of psychological deprivation that people experience in polar environments to just make their lives just a little bit more comfortable and help them achieve a greater sense of balance. 

 

Alok Jha (14.53): What about things like colours inside the buildings as well? Again, Antarctica has lots of white and if you stay there for long enough, you see multiple colours within the white, but that's your brain playing tricks on you. But within the bases, how do you use colour to help people sort of just exist and be happier for longer? 

Hugh Broughton (15.13): So on all the projects we've worked on, we've also worked with a colour psychologist called Angela Wright, and she's helped to develop special palettes of colour for use within these buildings, to help support people through the winter months, but also to help with identification of spaces as you move from one module to another, so that you recognize that change between sleeping space to living space, to operational space, or working space, and there's evidence of that having taken place right back through the history of construction in Antarctica.

And as we're talking about wellbeing, I think it's really important to also recognize that heritage of construction, that obviously the Antarctic Heritage Trust is so involved in. And one looks at buildings like Port Lockroy, or even some of the Huts of the Great Explorers, Shackleton and Scott, and you can see the efforts that they also went to in creating sort of comfortable, supportive spaces to promote well.

 

I've been lucky to work with the New Zealand program and right next to the current Scott Base, there's a building there, which is maintained by the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust, which was built by Sir Edmond Hillary. And reading through the design descriptions of that building and the thought process that went through the mind of Frank Ponder, who is the architect there, he talks particularly about the application of colour, and when you go in there, you see that colour and it somehow evokes the New Zealand landscape. So I think that use of colour, that manipulation of lighting, that sort of orientation towards key features within the landscape are all small, but vitally important features within the design to help people to cope with these extreme environments. 

 

Alok Jha (17.07):  You mentioned some of the historic bases there. I mean, the buildings that the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust are sort of preserving, they were built, you know, back in the 1940s, as you said, from essentially from flat packs that arrived on ships. How on earth are the standing today? I mean, is there a secret that they knew about keeping buildings robust in the Antarctic weather?

Hugh Broughton (17.29): I think the answer has a number of sort of strands to it. Obviously these buildings have been very well looked after by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, so that's one good reason why they're still standing. 

Also in Antarctica, the environment is generally very dry. Which people might find a bit odd because obviously there's so much snow around, but because the temperatures are so low, what tends to happen is that any moisture in the air gets instantly frozen out. So you end up with very dry air. 

 

And anybody who's been to Antarctica will tell you how much they need to constantly be drinking water cause it is so dry and how they also constantly are being zapped by static in handrails and door handles and that kind of thing, again, because of the dry air. 

 

And the benefit of that dry air, of course, is that things are very well preserved. Things like timber structures, which might slowly begin to rot if they were built in the UK, for example, are preserved for much longer periods in that dry Antarctic environment. And it's one of the reasons why, within some of the old Antarctic structures, you actually find tins of food that are still perfectly preserved. Again, because it's essentially you are living in a very dry freezer and that helps a great deal with that preservation. 

 

Alok Jha (18.52) I assume you've seen some of the, these older buildings, that have been preserved, and I just wonder when you look at them, despite the fact they have been of course, looked after, are there things from them that you've learned about construction in such extreme environments? You know, I just wonder if there's any inspiration you've got from them? 

Hugh Broughton (19.12): It's always fascinating to look back at what people did before and extract from them the most positive features, and within many of these buildings, the use of timber to create a kind of warm environment; the use of focal points, in their case, they often had a kind of fire or a burner or something like that as a focal point – we wouldn't do that now, of course, but we might introduce other features as focal points. 

The kinds of sort of materials, the soft furnishings –  all of those features we take into the new buildings. And it's really interesting, you know, whichever program we've been working with, people have always said, please, can we reflect the heritage of our Nation's Antarctic endeavours in the design of our new buildings. Please can we look back at the old structures and take lessons from those, and in many respects give a sense of that heritage of exploration and scientific investigation in whatever the new buildings are.

 

And yes, I have been really lucky to visit some of those incredible huts, some of them over a hundred years old, and to see the amazing atmosphere that they purvey and then try and capture some of that and transmit it into our own designs, whilst at the same time harnessing 21st century technology and design principle to create buildings which perhaps need a little less maintenance and perhaps support a rather greater variety of activity. 

 

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Camilla Nichol (20.45): Hello, I'm Camilla Nichol, Chief Executive of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust. We work to preserve and protect Antarctica's unique heritage: from the historic huts of early pioneers to the amazing discoveries in climate science. Our mission is to inspire current and future generations to discover, value and protect this precious wilderness.

Every year, our specialist conservation teams head south to Antarctica to conserve and protect our historic huts. With your generosity, we can preserve these amazing sites and bring to life the many fascinating stories they have to tell. Find out how you can help save Antarctica, protect our planet, and even adopt a penguin at ukaht.org or search for the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust.

 

Thank you. Enjoy the rest of the show. 

 

Joanna Lumley: Antarctica: the coldest, driest, and windiest place on earth where the penguins outnumber the people, there are only two seasons and no time zones. Discover this vast, breathtaking, frozen continent on a Hurtigruten Expeditions cruise. It's an adventure like no other. Explore the landscape. Get closer to nature and learn more than you'd expect with our knowledgeable Hurtigruten Expeditions team. Search ‘Follow your Curiosity’ to book now. 

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Alok Jha (22.09):  Now, I wonder if you could talk a bit about the history of science that's carried out at places like Halley. Obviously, there's been a long history of science generally in Antarctica. You know, I just wonder what is the sort of, kinds of research that go on there that just allow us to understand the world better, to allow us to sort of see how the planet is changing as a result of climate change, and also to just to study the planet itself and the wildlife and so on at the extreme parts of the world? 

Hugh Broughton (22.36): The type of science varies according to which station one's looking at, but at Halley, for example, there's a firm focus on atmospheric sciences and the relationship of our atmosphere with the sun. And some of the discoveries, of course, that have taken place at Halley have been particularly groundbreaking. And it was in the 1980s that three British scientists working at Halley first discovered evidence of a hole in the ozone, which subsequently led to the Montreal Protocol, which banned the use of CFCs, which, yeah, probably even till today is one of the most important pieces of global environmental legislation, so directly impacted by Antarctic science. 

At Halley it's all about the atmosphere, but if you go to the British station at Rothera, there's a great deal of focus on marine biology and science associated with the sea and with the natural world – penguin colonies, whales, seals, and so on. And that's also telling us about the impacts of rising sea temperatures on the flora and fauna of Antarctica, and helping us again to understand what the impacts of sea level rise and sea level temperature rise are. So there's a broad array, geology, glaciology, atmospheric science, climatology. There's a large number of different science streams which are conducted, but there's a really increasing focus on looking at impacts of climate change through those specific areas of investigation. 

 

Alok Jha (24.20): The climate crisis is ongoing. It's, you know, likely to get worse before it gets better. You've already mentioned that the Halley base, for example, can be moved, and that's one response to the fact that the landscape around it is changing. I wonder how you and your colleagues and the British Antarctic Survey think about the future of how you build on the continent. You're gonna have to build more things eventually, and I just wonder, are you thinking about how climate change will impact the designs that you create? 

Hugh Broughton (24.49): Absolutely. It's one of the key considerations in developing the designs. We've gotta think about things like sea level rise, so the positioning of buildings relative to the coast. Many of these research stations are right on the coast because obviously it makes the logistics and the resupply of the buildings that much easier.

But with rising sea levels, we've got to worry about the potential of the sea flooding the buildings in the future. With changes in temperature, there's also the potential for higher wind speeds, and we've got to design the buildings with a long life in mind. So we've got to be mindful that some of the wind speeds we experience now may be much greater in 30, 40, 50 years time.

 

There's a recognition that the science that's conducted in Antarctica is absolutely at the forefront in our understanding of climate change. So potentially the volume of science, which will be carried out in Antarctic research stations will increase over time to help support our understanding of climate change, and therefore, the scale of the buildings may well change also, and therefore, even more important that we consider the impacts of climate change on the design of those buildings to minimise the amount of maintenance that's required so that we can maximise the number of scientists who are there helping us to understand what's happening to our planet and how we can do something about it. 

 

Alok Jha (26.25): I wonder if there are things that you've learned from building and designing places for the extremes. I wonder if you've learned things that can be applied to more quotidian environments: cities and towns and where people live elsewhere. Are there particular materials or design mechanisms or anything else that help to sort of make our normal spaces more livable as a result of what you've done in Antarctica? 

Hugh Broughton (26.52): I think the key lesson is a simple adage of make more out of less. So that's definitely something I've learned a lot about through our design in Antarctica. How can we use less energy to nonetheless create a warm and comfortable environment for people to operate? And we do that with really well insulated buildings that are really airtight, so we need less energy to heat them.

How can we use less water so that we need less energy to melt the ice, to make the water? We do that using things like vacuum drainage systems so that you can flush the toilet with just one and a half litres of water rather than eight or nine litres that we would use in a standard toilet in the UK. 

 

Just having sensors on all the things like lighting so that they turn off when there's no one in the room; having low water use taps so that they still allow you to wash your hands properly, but probably with half the amount of water that a standard tap uses. I mean, there's a whole raft of these measures that we've introduced in these Antarctic buildings that now we find are increasingly popular when we mention them to our clients for buildings in the UK who are also looking to ways to minimise their impact on the environment. 

 

That kind of idea of building buildings that respond to their environment, not just their historic context, but their natural environment to minimise their impact and which can in the end of their life be then removed and leave little mark on the sites where they were constructed. These are all things which are becoming increasingly important in any kind of building design so that our footprint on the planet can be significantly reduced, compared to how we've been living for the last hundreds of years. 

 

Alok Jha (28.40): Now we've talked about some extreme situations in Antarctica, but your creative brain doesn't stop there, I'm led to believe, I think that as if building things on Antarctica wasn't hard enough, you've also got designs that could be used on the surface of another planet – tell us about the Martian house. 

Hugh Broughton (29.01): Yeah, so the Martian House project was a collaboration with two artists in Bristol –  Ella and Nikki. And they came to see us because they had this idea of building a prototype Martian house in Bristol. 

And they had observed how everything to do with Mars seemed to be the preserve of billionaire industrialists, or international or national space agencies. And their thinking was, well, if we're going to go to another planet, it really ought to be the concern of all of us. So let's show that the general public can also have ideas about life on another planet. And maybe by looking at life on another planet, we can cast the lens back onto ways in which we can live more sustainably on earth. So it was a really kind of exciting premise, I suppose, to begin a project that involved a significant amount of public outreach. 

 

Talking to people about how they imagined life on Mars.Also talking to scientists at the University of Bristol who are involved in NASA and European Space Agency programs so that anything we prepared was sort of grounded in reality. 

 

Alok Jha (30.16): Can you describe the house? I mean it's a striking looking thing. 

Hugh Broughton (30.19): Yeah. So, essentially the bottom floor is actually within a kind of red painted hoarding that was then beautifully decorated by this artist called Andy Council, who wrote all about the design of the house, and then the upper level, which simulates the Martian landscape, has the main body of the house on it, which is a gold inflatable structure. 

So the premise was that on Mars, there are a whole series of lava tubes, which flow just beneath the Martian surface. And our thinking was, well, we could put some of the accommodation into these lava tubes. Some of the tubes are massive. They're like, you know, four or five stories high or even bigger. So there's plenty of space that you could build within these. 

 

And the benefit of building under the surface is that you can protect yourself from the really cruel, cosmic and solar radiation that exists on the surface of Mars. But of course, it's all fine living underground, but from our experience in the Antarctic and looking back at some of those early incarnations of Halley, where people were living under the ice, they complain about not having a view outside of the smell and all that kind of thing.

 

So we're like, well, we must have something above the surface, so we'll put the main living spaces above. So our idea was to use an inflatable structure. Whereby you could collect together the Martian dirt on the ground and mix it with some of the ice, which also exists on the surface of Mars to create a homemade form of concrete that you could then feel inside the inflatable structure, and then provide you with protection from solar radiation and cosmic radiation. 

 

Within the hoarding down below, we had a bunk room bedroom. We had a Martian bathroom, a small Martian plant room for providing all the ventilation and so on. And then we also worked with another artist on the design of a hydroponics installation. So hydroponics is where fruit and veg salad are grown in nutrient enriched water without the need for using Earth. Yeah, it was a fascinating project. 

 

Alok Jha (32.26): Absolutely, I probably can't think of any architect who has a more interesting and creative job than you in terms of building things for places that others just wouldn't go anywhere near. And so it's, it's absolutely fascinating. 

Just to finish up two questions that you ask everybody: if you could only take one thing with you to Antarctica, what would it be?

 

Hugh Broughton (32.48): Oh my sketch pad, obviously. Yes, I think something that allows me to both record what I see and then respond to it in some creative form or other, yeah, I find that relaxing, engaging, and exciting. So I definitely want that by my side. 

Alok Jha (33.06): And why does Antarctica matter to you? 

Hugh Broughton (33.09): I think Antarctica is so crucial because of its impact on the rest of the planet. I think we have a tendency to think, oh, it's just that white blob at the bottom of the world, that's irrelevant. Never could it be more relevant because the changes that take place in Antarctica will have fundamental impacts on the rest of the planet. Imagine if all the ice in the Antarctic melted sea levels around the world would destroy many of the great global cities. So I think, we ignore Antarctica at our peril. It should be absolutely central to any discussions about climate change. It should be absolutely number one on the agenda, whether it's at any of the COP conferences, or any kind of discussion about environment looking after Antarctica and recognising it as a thermometer for the rest of the planet,

I think, is mandatory. 

 

Alok Jha: Hugh, thank you so much for your time. 

Hugh Broughton: Thank you very much.

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Alok Jha: Thank you very much for listening. A Voyage to Antarctica is brought to you by the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, and made possible by support from Hurtigruten Expeditions. To find out more about our guests and how you can support the trust, please head to our website, www.ukaht.org, or to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.

 

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This podcast is part of the Trust’s Antarctica In Sight Programme, supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and charitable gifts and donations. 

 

A Voyage to Antarctica was presented by me, Alok Jha. Music is by Alec Hewes, and editing by James Stickland. The show is produced by Jessica Norman.

 

See you next time.