My New Home is This Void-Like Pavilion in Pyeongchang, Painted in the Blackest Black in the World
LatestHere it is, a home I never knew I wanted until I saw it: a giant, gaping, cube, painted Vantablack, in the middle of Pyeongchang. It is the color of my heart and it is beautiful.
This building, which is not the lair of an evil but adorable abominable snowman or a villain in an off-brand Bond movie, is actually a temporary hangar for Hyundai. According to the Guardian, it was designed by architect Asif Khan and is described as the world’s largest “nanostructure.” It’s been sprayed with a delicious coating of Vantablack, the world’s darkest material; it absorbs about 99 percent of the light that hits it. It’s like a pitch black cube whose darkness is probably hard to accurately represent in photographs. Viewed from a certain angle, I bet it looks like a giant slice of nothing, carved out of the regular-ass world and I am obsessed.
Here is some more information, plus a quiet reminder that this is NOT a home for me, my cat, my sad belongings, and my infinte solitude.
Kahn’s Pyeongchang pavilion features thousands of pinpricks of light on the end of rods, modelled on the position of stars as viewed from that point on the earth, set at different depths, creating an illusion of floating in space as you walk around the building. Inside, the mesmerising blackness gives way to a bright white interior, where water droplets dart around in little channels milled into white acrylic tables, inspired by Hyundai’s launch of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle.
The all white interior is a dream. In my reality, glossy white floors, ceilings and walls means that every single visitor will be forced to remove their shoes and put on house slippers—a more refined way to live, if you ask me! I’m not entirely sure about the darting water droplets and the channels and the tables and stuff, but I’m sure I could at the very least plop a bed in the corner and call it a very dark night.
For those who are interested in maybe Vantablack-ing something smaller for their Pinterest DIY board, sorry. Ben Jensen, the chief technology officer of Surrey Nanosystems, who makes the material, said that it will never be sold to the general public. “It has to be applied by specialist contractors trained by us, using a technique that forms a consistent nanostructure,” he said. “It doesn’t come in a spray can.” Rude. But fair.