The Building
There have been five Halley bases built so far. The first four were all buried by snow accumulation and crushed until they were uninhabitable. Various construction methods were tried, from unprotected wooden huts to steel tunnels. Halley V has the main buildings built on steel platforms that are raised annually to keep them above the snow surface.
An architectural design competition was launched by RIBA Competitions and the British Antarctic Survey in June 2004 to provide a new design for Halley VI. The competition was entered by a number of architectural and engineering firms. In July 2005 the winning design was chosen, by Faber Maunsell and Hugh Broughton Architects. Servaccomm supplied modular accommodation pods for the new Halley VI station through Galliford Try International. The contract consisted of the manufacture of 26 pods in total, which were installed in eight modules providing fully serviced accommodation for 32 people.
It is a structure which is, like Halley V, jacked up on legs to keep it above the accumulation of snow. But unlike Halley V, there are skis on the bottom of these legs which allows the building to be relocated periodically.
Halley VI was built in Cape Town, South Africa by a South African consortium. The first sections were shipped to Antarctica in December 2007 and completion is expected during Nov/Dec 2011.
Read more about this topic: Halley Research Station
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