Polar station up for architecture award

BRITAIN'S polar station in the Antarctic and Australia's National Arboretum are among the nominees for an international architecture award.

The Margaret Whitlam Pavilion at the National Arboretum

A DEMOUNTABLE research station created in the icy wastes for the British Antarctic Survey has been shortlisted for a global architecture award.

The Halley VI centre - which few fans of design will ever get to see unless they venture to the Antarctic wilderness - is among the nominees for the World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards 2013.

The WAF Awards, now in their sixth year, have drawn entries from nearly 50 countries and include the National Arboretum in Australia, a media centre in Kazakhstan and an opera house in South Korea.

British architect firm Hugh Broughton created a series of four-legged pods, seven of them blue and one red, which stand on moving ice and can be raised to keep them above the snow which builds up. The centre is up for the "higher education/research" section of the awards, one of 29 categories for which buildings compete in Singapore in October.

Paul Finch, WAF program director, said: "From the subtle to the spectacular, from a four-room house to an 80-storey tower, the sheer quality and diversity reflected in the array of projects shortlisted today demonstrates the increasingly global nature of the event."