Akiva Stadlan, Cindy Wang

Studying the deep-sea aquifers in Antarctica, the research station emerges from processes that mirror its environment and research aims. The station reads like the ocean currents that critically impact Antarctica’s ice sheet tectonics and, like these currents, weaves research and social spaces with a Maglev track system that ferries research pods across its span. Influenced by the microorganisms studied in these deep-sea aquifers, the station moves by crawling through the snow with an exoskeleton of spindly mechanical legs propelled by the fierce Antarctic wind, revealing new and uncanny relationships between the macromovements of Antarctic ice and the microbiology buried deep below