The challenge
Antarctica New Zealand needed to confirm designs for new living and dining spaces to enable people to stay safe, healthy, and productive in one of Earth’s harshest environments. The project is Antarctica, New Zealand’s largest, with accommodation and welfare spaces as critical design elements.
Simon Shelton, Senior Project Manager, engaged the CDHB Design Lab to resolve walkway, accommodation and dining workflow questions before finalising designs. Contrasting views led the team to seek a fast, low-risk way to test concepts at full scale and inform decisions.
How we helped
With Simon and the team, we ran a focused, four-hour prototyping session using the DUCTRI method. We mocked up life-size layouts with cardboard, props, and visuals so the team could walk through the spaces as if they were built, experiencing the room feel and flow beyond the plans.
As the team reviewed these mockups together, they explored different options for room layouts and daily workflows for both short- and long-term residents. Because the prototypes were low‑cost, they could quickly test alternatives, discuss trade‑offs and iterate the design on the spot. By the end of the session, they had agreed on a set of design changes to inform the final accommodation and dining designs before commissioning.
The impact
The prototyping session gave the Scott Base Redevelopment Team a concrete, shared experience of daily life in the new accommodation and dining spaces, moving beyond drawings and assumptions. In just a few hours, they surfaced and resolved design tensions, made targeted changes, and accepted them before final decisions were made. This small exercise de-risked key living space elements and enabled a more confident, unified transition to detailed design for this nationally significant, multi-stage project.