The blackest building in history has appeared in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang. In the truest sense of this expression. Architect Asif Khan was commissioned to create a new Hyundai Pavilion with parabolic walls 10 meters high and 35 meters long on the occasion of the 2018 Winter Olympics and to cover it with one of the blackest known Vantablack VBx 2 substances.
Vantablack VBx 2, which absorbs 99 percent of visible light, was manufactured by NanoSystems. The structure covered with substance looks simply unreal. Interestingly, the inside of the building is completely white, which creates a fantastic contrast.
Despite the fact that Vantablack is really impressive, the builders had to tinker a lot in order to apply it to the surface of the building. Recall that the Vantablack substance itself consists of carbon nanotubes. Millions of carbon nanotubes stacked vertically next to each other. Each nanotube has a diameter of about 20 nanometers (which is about 3,500 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair) and a length of 14 to 50 microns (1 micron = 0.001 millimeters). When light hits the nanotubes, the photons are actually trapped in their structure, start to randomly move inside and eventually disappear, turning into heat.
The original method of coating a material with Vantablack nanotubes means literally "growing" them on the material through chemical vapor deposition. The result is a substance that can absorb 99.6 percent of all visible, infrared, and ultraviolet light.
Surrey NanoSystems was able to develop a nebulized version of Vantablack that is only able to block visible light, but in which the nanotubes are randomly arranged, rather than structurally vertical as in the original substance. VBx 2 paint, in turn, does not use nanotubes at all and can be used commercially, since its production is much easier. Hyundai Pavilion was covered with the finished product.
Under certain light conditions, the three-dimensionality of the building seems to disappear. And the metal rods built into the walls, the ends of which go out, create the effect of stars shining against a background of complete darkness.
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“From a distance, the structure will look like a view from a window opening into open space. As you approach it, this sensation will increase, and upon entering the building, you will feel as if you are swallowed up by a cloud of darkness,”Khan comments.
But as noted above, the interior of the building is completely opposite to the exterior. Everything inside is glowing with bright light, and the installation in the form of stone streams, along which 25,000 drops of water run to the center of the composition every minute, is an ideal place for relaxation, meditation, or just admiring such beauty. Tactile sensors built into the installation allow visitors to interact with it, changing the rhythm of movement and collision of drops with each other. According to the designer, the composition embodies the city seen from space.
The pavilion was commissioned by Hyundai Motor and is part of a project to improve human mobility. Hyundai's second project is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, both of which reflect a successful future. The black facade of the building embodies the breadth of the universe, and the water installation represents hydrogen molecules that collide with each other, like in a new company car.
“Visitors to the pavilion, once inside the building, will be surprised by the bright and light space, as well as the installation located in its center. Once your eyes get used to the light environment, you can feel for a moment that the droplets running through the channels have a lot in common with the stars,”says Khan.
“I wanted to go from cosmic dimensions to the size of water droplets in a few steps. The droplets contain the same hydrogen as the stars from the very beginning of the universe."
The pavilion has already opened for everyone who wants to visit it.
Nikolay Khizhnyak