Archinect - News

Theaster Gates' Serpentine Pavilion opens as a shrine to community building and sacred practices

2022-06-07T13:53:00-04:00

Theaster Gates' Serpentine Pavilion has been revealed in London's Kensington Gardens, showcasing his vision for a Black Chapel that advances the fair's evangelizing mission to be an incubator for community building, civic culture, and public engagement.

In a circular form evoking several architectural traditions and cultures, including traditional African structures and Hungarian round churches, the pavilion is rendered in the same stark-looking black tar color as the suite of 14 new paintings Gates executed for the exhibition, providing an additional reference to the meditative elements present in Houston's Rothko Chapel, which the 48-year-old artist credited as an additional source of design inspiration.

Gates conceives of his pavilion as “a site for contemplation and convening” where gatherers are hailed together artistically in remembrance of lost places of “spiritual communion” that populate urban areas like London and his hometown of Chicago. It was executed with design help...

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...

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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Trend Watch: Shou sugi ban, the art of preserving wood by charring

2017-10-21T23:05:00-04:00

The unpolished, naturalistic quality of burnt wood also appeals to architects seeking to evoke a rough organic feel in tune with the surrounding landscape. It’s bituminous-black and scaly, like alligator skin that’s been singed. But such dark, reptilian wood is also startling and gorgeously eerie...like it floated out of a dream

Amanda Fortini highlights the ancient Japanese technique, which has grown in popularity among Western architects.

A topic discussed here on Archinect back in 2007 and then in 2012.

Sick of the white cube? This Hong Kong gallery is going all black

2016-12-13T12:42:00-05:00

[Empty Gallery] is entirely black—black walls, black floors, black fittings. When you first enter, it is completely, utterly dark. It is only when you reach the first of the main art spaces that dim lighting illuminates the works on display. “Hong Kong is so fast; the language of advertising is so strong and loud and intense. We’re amped up all the time... It helps you give art a chance to communicate.”

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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”.

Norma Merrick Sklarek obituary: Pioneering African American architect was 85

2012-02-10T14:22:00-05:00

Norma Merrick Sklarek, the first African American woman in the country to become a licensed architect, who helped produce Terminal 1 at Los Angeles International Airport and the American Embassy in Tokyo, died Monday at her home in Pacific Palisades. She was 85.