British Council presents Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica a new international touring exhibition that illustrates how innovative contemporary architecture is enabling scientists to live and work in one of the most extreme environments on our planet.
The exhibition features five imaginative designs for Antarctic research stations and opens at Architecture and Design Scotland, The Lighthouse in Glasgow from 26 July to 2 October 2013 before touring to MOSI (Museum of Science & Industry) as part of Manchester Science Festival (21 October – 6 January) and then internationally. From the newly opened British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Research station to the speculative Iceberg Living Station, Ice Lab gives visitors a unique view of the inspiration, ingenuity and creativity behind architecture in the coldest, windiest, driest and most isolated place on earth.
The first exhibition of its kind, Ice Lab includes architectural drawings, models, photographs and films that give the visitor a sense of what it takes to live and work in Antarctica. Sources of inspiration for the projects including original drawings from Archigram’s ‘Walking City’ are on display as well as a newly commissioned light and audio work by international visual artist Torsten Lauschmann. The Glasgow-based artist has created this work in collaboration with ‘We Made That’, the exhibition’s designers.
Ice Lab highlights the diverse and cutting edge science that takes place on the frozen continent: from collecting 4.5 billion year old meteorites that illuminate how the solar system was formed to drilling ice cores whose bubbles of ancient air reveal the earth’s climate history; from cutting edge astronomy amongst the world’s clearest skies to studying its Dry Valleys – the closest thing to ‘Mars on Earth’. www.britishcouncil.org