A Brief History of Elevated Construction in Antarctica

Casey Station
Location: Bailey Peninsula in Vincennes Bay
The first elevated structure built on Antarctica was Australia's Casey Station, which became operational in 1969. It consisted of a row of 13 inexpensive modular buildings elevated ten feet above the surface on scaffold piping. Oriented at right angles to the prevailing wind, the buildings were connected on the windward face by a walkway covered with semicircular corrugated galvanized steel siding. On the leeward side, the buildings were squared off. New Casey Station, built in 1989 to replace what came to be called Old Casey Station, was constructed on grade. The elevated design of Old Casey was not repeated, but not because it hadn't performed as planned. It had actually performed too well: personnel seldom had to expose themselves to the elements and this was seen as a possible cause of lower productivity.

Filchner Station
Location: Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf
In 1982 Germany completed construction of a small above-surface summer station (occupancy 12 persons, summer only) on an ice shelf in the southern portion of the Weddell Sea. The site received an annual snow accumulation of approximately one-half meter, strong winter winds, and a seaward drift of the ice shelf to the order of 1,000 meters per year. To overcome snow drifting and deposition, modular buildings were placed on top of a jackable structural platform on steel columns. Initially 10 to 14 feet above the snow surface, the platform was lowered to the surface every two to three years by a system of winches and cables. The columns were extended by approximately one meter and the platform hoisted to its new height. The entire process took three to four days. This worked until February 1999, when a large portion of the ice shelf calved and took the station (unmanned at the time) with it.

Halley Station V
Occupancy: 30 persons
Location: Brunt Ice Shelf off of Coats Land
In 1992, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) opened the fourth replacement of Halley Station (Halley V), an elevated station based on the jackable platform concept used earlier at Filchner Station. Conditions on the Brunt Ice Shelf are severe, with annual snow deposition of 1.5 meters, gale-force winds common half the year, and an annual seaward movement of the ice shelf of approximately 850 meters. The 13,500-sf station was at the time the most ambitious elevated facility in Antarctica, consisting of three separate buildings set 300 meters apart from one another at the three points of a triangular site plan. Each platform is set initially four to five meters above the surface. As at Filchner, the platforms are lowered to the surface, the columns extended, and the platforms jacked back up. The process takes approximately one week during which time the station is fully operational. The jacking process, which must be performed annually, originally required one bottle jack and two operators at every column working in unison, but is now performed with electric motors.

[Source "The Rationale For Above-Surface Facilities," William D. Brooks, AIA, Civil Engineering Magazine, December 2000 http://www.pubs.asce.org/ceonline/1200feat2.html]