Maria Victoria Nuviala Antelo

Shaping the Icescape: An Architectural Biography of Antarctica, co-authored by Dr. Victoria Nuviala Antelo, M.Arch. Violeta Nuviala Antelo, and Dr. Ximena Senatore, for Cambridge University Press, challenges the enduring image of Antarctica as a pristine, uninhabited wilderness. The book offers a radically new interpretation of the continent through its architectural icescape, the material traces, infrastructures, and imaginaries that have shaped human presence at the edge of the world. While Antarctica has often been portrayed as a blank space devoid of human history, this study reveals how architecture has quietly inscribed itself on the continent over the past 250 years. From whalers’ shelters and imperial outposts to scientific stations and experimental habitats, architectural forms have mediated competing narratives of exploration, colonialism, science, and environmental politics. By approaching the continent through an architectural biography, this work recenters the discussion of Antarctica’s past and present, decentering the subjects who have historically monopolized its colonial and scientific discourses. At its core lies a set of provocative questions: What stories are buried in Antarctica’s remote ruins and futuristic laboratories? What planetary futures do these architectures envision or conceal? Drawing on anthropology, contemporary archaeology, architectural theory, and decolonial thought, Shaping the Icescape traces the complex and evolving relationships between humans, architecture, and material culture in Antarctica. It contributes to critical anthropological, architectural, and archaeological debates on coloniality, materiality, and the environment, positioning Antarctica as both a site of historical inquiry and a laboratory for reimagining how humans inhabit and narrate the planet.