Isle firm gets
Antarctica design job

By Russ Lynch
Star-Bulletin

An architectural and engineering firm in sunny Honolulu has been chosen to design buildings to survive in the frozen conditions of the South Pole.

Ferraro Choi and Associates won the contract to design 35,000 square feet of new facilities for the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and to renovate part of the existing camp. The new buildings will house laboratories, living space and support facilities for scientists who live and work at the Pole.

Partner Joseph J. Ferraro said his firm worked nearly 10 years on the design. "We're very excited by the chance to apply our design expertise in the most remote location in the world," he said.

The station is at an altitude of 9,200 feet and the altitude keeps growing. Since the ice doesn't thaw and snow adds to it, it grows an average of eight inches a year. The Ferraro firm's design calls for structures to be jacked up on large steel pipe columns as needed.

The firm's contract is the first of three design awards, with the others yet to be awarded, in a three-phase, $115 million project to rebuild the South Pole station. Ferraro Choi's contract was awarded by the Pacific division of the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, representing the National Science Foundation.

Ferraro Choi designed components of the structures so they will fit in containers to be freighted to the Pole by ski-equipped cargo planes.