Black facades on everything from houses to skyscrapers are gaining more notice in recent years. Just flip through the pages of Phaidon’s 2017 book Black: Architecture in Monochrome to view striking dark structures by the likes of David Adjaye, Jean Nouvel, and Steven Holl. The Winter Olympics in Korea had its own black beauty, a pavilion designed by London architect Asif Khan for Hyundai Motor Company.
The structure’s black-coated parabolic façades created a void while thousands of tiny white lights set against this backdrop evoked floating stars in outer space. The effect was made possible with Vantablack VBx2, a new ultra-low-density paint developed by Surrey NanoSystems that, with 1 percent reflectance in the visible spectrum, appears matte and two-dimensional from any angle. “As you walk around it, your perception doesn’t change because the reflection is staying the same. This is almost unheard of in any black paint,” says Ben Jensen, the chief technical officer at Surrey NanoSystems. This project, however, was a one-off as Vantablack VBx2 is not rated for exterior application.
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