Hoberman Dome: A Deployable Arctic Settlement That Grows From 1,000 to 1,000,000

What if a building could compress into a compact transportable unit, then unfold on site like a mechanical organism, rising on telescopic supports to create a climate-controlled settlement in one of the coldest places on Earth? The Hoberman Dome takes Chuck Hoberman's isokinetic structures as its starting point and scales the idea to urban proportions: a geodesic shelter clad in ETFE hexagonal panels that can deploy in stages, eventually linking into a networked settlement capable of housing up to one million people on Canada's Ellesmere Island, where temperatures plummet below minus 56°C and polar night lasts five months.

Designed by Кира Матвеева, the project was shortlisted in the EHC - Arctic competition, which challenges entrants to envision resilient habitats for extreme polar environments. The proposal addresses not just shelter but an entire self-sustaining urban system: energy generation through solar, wind, and nuclear power; a Hyperloop-integrated transport network; and a modular zoning strategy that balances living, work, and recreation as the population grows.

Hexagonal Logic: A Settlement Pattern Borrowed From Celestial Systems

The masterplan draws on celestial system geometry to organize its settlement in a hexagonal pattern, with a central energy module radiating outward to supply power and define zones. The site diagram reveals how contour lines of Ellesmere Island's terrain interact with the Hyperloop station, positioning the habitat for efficient connectivity to a broader Arctic transportation network. A sectional cut through a single dome shows housing units nested beneath a geodesic roof of hexagonal panels, elevated above grade on telescopic supports that allow airflow beneath the structure. That raised floor is not merely aesthetic: it prevents heat transfer to the permafrost below, a critical move in any Arctic construction.

The hexagonal module is repeated at every scale, from individual room clusters up to the settlement's overall footprint. This fractal consistency is not decorative; it optimizes material use and ensures each dome can connect to its neighbors through standardized linking corridors, allowing the settlement to expand without redesigning its infrastructure.

Warm Interiors Behind Curved Glass: Living at Minus 56°C

Step inside and the Arctic disappears. The kitchen and dining rendering shows a curved window wall that wraps the living space in daylight (or what passes for it during Ellesmere's brief summers), while pendant lighting compensates during the five-month polar night. Surfaces feel residential, not industrial: warm tones, domestic-scale furniture, and spatial proportions that counter the psychological toll of prolonged darkness and isolation. A second interior view reveals patterned tile walls and a textile floor runner, deliberate choices that bring visual richness to a place where the outdoor palette is relentlessly monochrome.

These interiors are maintained by an infrared heating system paired with Energy Recovery Ventilation, which recaptures heat from exhaust air to minimize energy loss. The ETFE hexagonal panels forming the dome's skin provide high insulation values while remaining lightweight, a material decision that directly serves both the dome's deployability and its thermal performance in extreme cold and low humidity.

Dome Clusters and Linking Corridors: The Aerial View

From above, the settlement reads as a constellation of interconnected domes joined by hexagonal linking corridors. Long shadows cast across the terrain hint at the extreme solar angles the site experiences for much of the year, reinforcing why renewable energy generation here relies on wind and nuclear power alongside solar. The circular floor plan of a single dome shows how hexagonal housing units cluster within the geodesic shell, oriented according to a solar diagram that maximizes passive gains during the brief periods of daylight.

The construction sequence is designed around four stages. First, the parental dome deploys and adapts to terrain. Second, telescopic supports elevate the structure. Third, living units unfold within. Fourth, inter-unit connections lock the urban framework together. This staged approach means the settlement can begin supporting inhabitants well before the full build-out is complete, a practical necessity when construction windows in the high Arctic are vanishingly short.

Stacking Hexagons: How the Floors Taper Upward

The floor plan drawings expose the dome's vertical logic. At the base, hexagonal room clusters pack tightly in a circular formation across two levels, maximizing usable area where the dome's diameter is greatest. As the structure tapers upward, each successive level contains progressively fewer modules, following the geodesic curvature rather than fighting it. The result is a building section that feels intuitively proportioned: communal and dense at the ground, more intimate and private above.

This tapering also carries structural benefits. Fewer modules at higher levels reduce dead load on the dome's upper segments, keeping the deployable mechanism viable and the telescopic supports within reasonable load limits. It is a geometry that serves construction logistics, thermal performance, and spatial quality simultaneously.

Why This Project Matters

Arctic design projects often fall into one of two traps: they treat the site as a blank canvas for futuristic spectacle, or they become so consumed by engineering constraints that habitation quality disappears. Кира Матвеева's Hoberman Dome navigates between these poles with a clear-eyed systems approach. The hexagonal geometry is not a stylistic choice but a structural, thermal, and urban planning decision that repeats from the room scale to the masterplan. The deployable construction sequence acknowledges that building in the Arctic is as much a logistical problem as a design one.

What elevates the proposal beyond concept is its ambition to scale. A settlement designed for 1,000 people that can grow to one million demands modular thinking at every level, from the ETFE panel to the Hyperloop connection. Whether or not the specific population target is achievable, the underlying framework, a self-sustaining habitat powered by diversified renewable and nuclear energy, deployable in stages, and organized around a repeatable spatial unit, offers a serious template for extreme environment architecture. In a world where climate change is making more territory simultaneously accessible and hostile, that template has value well beyond Ellesmere Island.

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About the Designers

Designer: Кира Матвеева

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Project credits: Hoberman Dome by Кира Матвеева EHC - Arctic (uni.xyz).