Archinect - News

Into the abyss: An artist has created a deeper shade of black in an ongoing quest for design purity

2021-08-11T13:34:00-04:00

A design world arms race to make the blackest black has intensified this week after an artist revealed his latest creation called Blink.

Stuart Semple created the ink over a period of two years after launching a precursor called Black 3.0 in 2019. The artist had been reacting to the controversy surrounding Anish Kapoor’s being given exclusive rights to Vantablack, the pigment that was initially developed for use on satellites owing to its high absorption rate.

Semple began experimenting with black after a farcical attempt to engineer a purer pink in parody of Kapoor. A more serious effort took shape after the 2019 release and following a beta testing period in which he assembled a team of other artists and designers to provide feedback for the darker and more opaque shade.

“Chemically there are similarities, but the acrylic resin in Black 3.0 is fundamentally different in Blink because we nee...

Researchers create ultra-white paint that could cool buildings

2021-04-16T17:54:00-04:00

Scientists in the US have developed a paint significantly "whiter than the whitest paint currently available". Tests carried out by researchers at Purdue University on their "ultra-white" paint showed it reflected more than 98% of sunlight. That suggests, the scientists say, that it could help save energy and fight climate change.

The paint's whiteness opens up a range of cooling features that, applied at an industrial scale, could limit the built environment's contributing effect to global warming and its dependency on traditional air conditioning.

"If you were to use this paint to cover a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we estimate that you could get a cooling power of 10 kilowatts. That’s more powerful than the central air conditioners used by most houses," predicts Xiulin Ruan, the Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, who led the research.

An infrared camera shows how a sample of the whitest white paint (the dark purple square in the middle) actually cools the board below ambient temperature. Credit: Purdue University/Joseph Peoples.

"Using high-accuracy temperature reading equipment called thermocouples, the researchers demonstrated outdoors that the paint can keep surfaces 19 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than their ambient surroundings at night," claims the study. "It can also cool surfaces 8 d...

Darkest building on Earth: Asif Khan's Vantablack-coated pavilion opens for Winter Olympics

2018-02-08T14:01:00-05:00

Sprayed with Vantablack Vbx2, a pavilion at the Winter Olympics in South Korea absorbs 99% of light. [...] Lurking between the competition venues like an angular black hole, it looks like a portal to a parallel universe, waiting to suck unsuspecting ski fans into its vortex.

Photo: Luke Hayes/Hyundai

Sports fans around the world can't wait for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics to officially open tomorrow, but there's more to the spectacle than just athletic competitions on snow and ice: London-based architect & designer Asif Khan has created the "darkest building on earth" by coating the temporary pavilion he designed for South Korean car maker Hyundai in Vantablack Vbx2, a super-black nanomaterial which absorbs more than 99% of the light that reaches its surface — the result is the visual illusion of a massive black void.

Photo: Luke Hayes/Hyundai

"It’s like a nano-scale coral reef," The Guardian quotes Ben Jensen, chief technical officer of Surrey Nanosystems, the British company which has developed the mysterious material. "Photons get into it and they bounce around within its structure until they’re all absorbed. The optical cavities in the ‘reef’ are around 1,000th the width of a human hair."

Photo: Luke Hayes/Hyundai

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Architect Asif Khan will use darkest material on earth to create a 'schism in space' for Winter Olympics

2017-11-30T13:07:00-05:00

Excitement is building for the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympics and some of that excitement is for an actual building. Hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the ceremonies kicking off on February 9th will include the unveiling of a colorless building, designed by the British architect, Asif Khan.

To achieve this effect, Khan will be using spray-on version of Vantablack—a super black material first developed by Surrey NanoSystems. Considered the darkest man-made substance in the world, Vantablack absorbs 99.96% of light, causing the human eye to see nothing.

According to CNN, the buildings will have four curved walls, coated in Vantablack and studded with thousands of tiny lights. Envisioned as a "schism in space," the super dark treatment will cause the building, from a distance, to look like a slit of blackness. As one approaches the building, the "star field will grow to fill your entire field of view, and then you'll enter as though you're being absorbed into a cloud of blackness" de...

Prepare to soon spot the blackest of black materials in architecture

2016-03-08T13:56:00-05:00

The British company developing the uses of a super black, light absorbent material called Vantablack S-VIS is working with leading architects as well as the British artist Anish Kapoor. The founder and chief technology officer of Surrey NanoSystems, Ben Jensen, says that the company is working with “some large and well respected global architects,” and that the coating is already available for “suitable applications”. He declined to name the architects involved “due to prior agreements”.