project02:WS12026MSc2 G2Design

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Group 2: Brendan Exterkate - Gabriel Marks - Giorgia Vercelloni - Maciej Sachse - Ruxandra Florut - Zuzanna Schleifer - Long Ki

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Design

Prototyping

Presentations

Report

Video

Design

The design phase developed the project’s central architectural hypothesis: that habitability in mission-driven confinement depends not only on technical shelter, but on the capacity of the interior to support changing routines, controlled withdrawal, and environmental responsiveness over time. Within this framework, space, geometry, and light were treated as interconnected components of a single adaptive system.

Spatial premise

TROLL Station and the project

The project addresses habitability in mission-driven confinement by rethinking the Antarctic container not as a neutral technical shell, but as an adaptive interior capable of supporting occupation under extreme seasonal stress. At Troll Station, the container already defines the site's constructive and logistical logic, so the proposal does not reject this condition from the outside. Instead, it works from within, asking how a highly constrained volume might be transformed into an inhabitable environment during periods of prolonged darkness, limited mobility, and heightened dependence on the interior. The design, therefore, begins with a specific architectural problem: how to provide spatial and environmental support within an already fixed infrastructural framework.

Design drivers

Day-shift and night-shift: lighting needs and routines.

The proposal was structured around three key spatial needs: agency, privacy, and sleep. These were identified as the minimum conditions required for a compact shared habitat to remain inhabitable during confinement. Agency refers to occupants' ability to adjust, appropriate, or reinterpret the environment in response to changing routines and mental states. Privacy concerns the ability to establish temporary separation and retreat despite continuous co-presence. Sleep was understood not only as a biological necessity, but as a spatial and environmental condition shaped by light, rhythm, and recovery. These design drivers were reinforced by the station’s alternating day-shift and night-shift routines, which required the interior to accommodate overlapping temporalities rather than a single fixed schedule. In this sense, the project was conceived not as a static layout, but as a support system for variable patterns of inhabitation.

Reconfigurable uses

Agency, privacy, sleep

Adaptive occupation

Reconfigurability was used to generate different modes of occupation within the same spatial envelope, allowing the habitat to adapt to changing needs rather than assigning each activity to a rigid room. The system supports rest, focused work, retreat, and informal interaction, while also allowing the same interior to shift according to bodily state, social proximity, and time of day. This approach was especially important under confinement, where the challenge is not simply to fit multiple functions into a small space, but to make cohabitation psychologically sustainable over time. The adaptive furniture and interior surfaces were therefore designed to mediate between co-presence and withdrawal, creating differentiated conditions within a limited volume and enabling the users to move between shared and more secluded modes of occupation.

From geometry to environmental surface

Selecting surfaces

Structural gradient

The geometric development of the project is based on the coexistence of two distinct but complementary systems: an orthogonal envelope and a Voronoi-based infill. The orthogonal system preserves the container's constructive clarity, maintaining its dimensional and infrastructural logic. Within this stable frame, the Voronoi geometry acts as an internal layer of modulation, producing inhabitable variation, differentiated surfaces, and local environmental effects. The design was progressively refined through multiple scales, moving from the overall spatial envelope to selected surfaces and finally to differentiated panels capable of integrating structural, acoustic, and luminous functions. This process was not driven by form-making alone. Rather, geometry became the medium through which the project aligned spatial intent, performative behaviour, and fabrication logic, demonstrating how an adaptive interior can be developed from the relation between stable enclosure and responsive inner articulation.

Light as spatial layer

Light zoning

Lighting was treated as an architectural layer embedded within the furniture and surface system rather than as a secondary technical addition. Its role was not merely to illuminate the interior, but to structure routines, differentiate zones, and respond to the absence and instability of natural light during the polar night. In this sense, light became a primary environmental tool through which the project could support focus, rest, retreat, and psychological endurance. The proposal developed a predictive lighting workflow that links circadian requirements, environmental conditions, and selected physiological inputs to changes in illuminance and correlated colour temperature. As a result, the luminous environment was conceived not as a collection of fixed scenes, but as a responsive spatial atmosphere able to adapt to use, bodily state, and time-based patterns of occupation. Light therefore operates here as both an environmental support system and a spatial device, reinforcing the project’s broader ambition to produce an interior that remains inhabitable under prolonged confinement.