McMurdo, Antarctica

(Photo credit The Dry Valleys)

McMurdo Station is the largest research center on Antarctica, and one of three US centers on the content (the others being Palmer and South Pole). McMurdo is south of New Zealand and has a summer population of 1100 scientists and support staff. While it’s technically a research center, it has many of the same facilities any town would. According to a blogger stationed there:

For all its isolation there’s a large number of amenities and entertainment available: there’s a half-size basketball court, a gym, rockclimbing wall, two dingy bars, a coffee house, wireless internet (for the scientists), a cafeteria, and dorms.

McMurdo is a “town” where the primary industry is science and the primary considerations for urban planning is the weather and scarcity of materials (though I doubt any conscious planning was ever done). It’s a bit like an arctic mining town, if instead of drilling for oil they were drilling ice cores for analysis (or something like that).

I think it would be fascinating to have a design competition where designers are given McMurdo as it is now and asked to rearrange or re-imagine the town. My guess is that McMurdo’s town plan was an evolution (“Put the dorms near the vehicle building, I guess”) instead of something based on a master plan. What would it be like if it was intentionally designed? What is the typology of an Antarctic “town”?