In a setting dominated by the glistening white of snow and ice where the 2018 Winter Olympics competitions are held, an almost complete black structure stands out even more.
It is the pavilion of the South Korean car brand Hyundai, a 10-meter-high temporary building embedded like an obsidian meteorite in the middle of the sports facilities. Designed by British architect Asif Khan, it is covered by a layer of Vantablack VBx 2, a material that absorbs 99% of the light it receives.
The illusion of emptiness
Vantablack, a product of the British company Surrey Nanosystems, is a spray used in buildings, ceilings and spaces where architects and designers want to create the surprising visual effects that almost absolute blackness brings about. Hyundai’s pavilion in PyeongChang demonstrates the possibilities of this substance: it looks like a block of emptiness, an architectural black hole punctuated by small lights on its surface that simulate stars, which adds depth to the building.
This novel component consists of a structure of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes. It was invented to reduce the atmospheric distortion that affects telescopes: starlight travels through the Earth’s atmosphere, whose gases act as lenses and deform it, making the stars look double.
Speaking to The Guardian, Ben Jensen, a Surrey Nanosystems technician, explains that Vantablack is like “a nanoscale coral reef. The photons reach it and are bouncing through its structure until they are absorbed. The optical cavities of this structure have a thickness that is one thousandth of that of a human hair ”.
A product for the entertainment society
The Vantablack is very suitable for sports competition facilities, trade fairs, congresses, exhibitions and other events, and also for museums. The sculptor Anish Kapoor acquired the rights to this substance in 2014 (and has used it since then in his works), an agreement for which the company that created the product was widely criticized.
Despite this exclusivity, it seems that Surrey Nanosystems will commercialize its invention in the coming months, but it will not be available to everyone. Although it is a spray, it is a consistent nanostructure that has to be applied by specialized technicians, so its sale will be restricted.
