The "Princess Elizabeth" base is currently housed in a huge hangar in the Belgian capital but will soon be bound for the frozen south to highlight the effects of climate change.

The pre-fabricated, aerodynamically-designed wood and stainless steel structure and its steel legs, standing 10 metres high and 22 metres wide (33 by 72 feet), will be open to the public from Thursday to Sunday in the hope of generating plenty of environmentally-friendly interest.

It will then be dismantled and transported by sea in November to Antarctica, where it will be reassembled in the expectation of engendering decades of 'sexy' scientific research.

To ensure that everything is in working order and to "forge the team" which will be operating in close quarters in the Antarctic during the southern summer (December-March), the polar base has been up and running for the last five weeks among former customs warehouses.

Hubert, who became concerned at the melting of the ice caps during previous polar expeditions, shares the belief of former US vice-president Al Gore and others that everything possible must be done to minimise the effects of global warming "to allow us to avoid catastrophe."

"It is the first time that humanity has been confronted with a problem of such a planetary scale, which requires a perfect understanding of the causes and obliges us to find unprecedented solutions," he told AFP ahead of the formal unveiling.

"The Antarctic is a place where the temperature is always below zero. That allows climatographers to dig deep and go far back in time in studying gases caught in ice crystals," added Hubert, who heads the five-year-old International Polar Foundation.

"We already know that we need to act" in the transport, domestic and industrial sectors, he said.

"However the public won't make the necessary adjustments unless they perceive energy economies or ecology as 'sexy'," the media-savvy Belgian explorer added.

"And if the public as well as private companies are convinced, then the politicians will also have to act," he continued enthusiastically.

To that end a 'polar tram' -- designed to represent an iceberg -- will run for a year in Brussels carrying different messages on the polar regions each month to raise public awareness.

In 2004 Hubert, an engineer by training, devised the idea of building a new scientific station in the Antarctic, 110 years after fellow-Belgian Adrien de Gerlache became the first man to spend winter in the white continent and 40 years after the Belgian "King Baudoin" base was abandoned.

Financed mainly by private funds and with Belgium's Crown Prince Philippe as its patron, the project will eventually sit at 72 degrees latitude some 200 kilometres (120 miles) inside the Antarctic circle on a rocky peak 1,300 metres above icy sea level.

"From an ecological point of view it is totally innovative as the base will be practically 'zero-emission'," explained project head and fellow-engineer Johan Berte.

In total isolation, so as to avoid possible oil spills and other not-so-natural disasters, it will be powered by solar panels and wind turbines. Water will be recycled and solid waste whisked away every two years, he said.

By demonstrating that it is possible to construct such a building in such a cold, harsh region the team hopes to get across the idea that it is possible to do the same thing anywhere in the world.

With a 20-person capacity the base will, from November 2008, be able to host international scientific expeditions for up to four months.

Its site, chosen after three preliminary scouting trips, offers many research possibilities, according to the project's scientific leader Gauthier Chapelle.

"The base will serve as a meteorological station, geologists will be able to explore the nearby mountainous chain, there is also a little fresh water lake containing micro-organisms for the biologists as well as the glaciers to study," he said.

The hoped-for life-span of Princess Elizabeth is "at least 30 years" but it could still be there in a hundred years' time, said Chapelle.

He didn't hazard a guess as to what the rest of the planet will look like by then.

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