Archinect - News

Populous-designed 'Ice Ribbon' for the 2022 Winter Olympics takes center stage in Beijing

2022-02-03T13:08:00-05:00

The eyes of the world will soon turn to the new Populous-designed National Speed Skating Oval as the 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympics prepare to kick off in Beijing.

As the only new permanent venue at this year’s games, the 'Ice Ribbon' takes its place in line with the National Aquatics Center and Ai Weiwei and Herzog & de Meuron-designed Bird’s Nest on a central corridor called the Olympic Green. The design is meant to symbolize speed and dynamism associated with the sport of speed skating.

Image courtesy Populous

The 12,000-seat venue will host the speed skating events and later be transformed into the long-term home for China’s newIce and Snow Sports Development Plan, which aims to get an impressive 300 million people involved in winter sports by the year 2025.

Image courtesy Populous

“Much of the inspiration for the conceptual design of the ‘Ice Ribbon’ came from a traditional ice game played in old Beijing which involved a high-speed spinning ice top,” explains Populous Ch...

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

Photo...

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...

The Bidding For The 2022 Olympics Is A Disaster Because Everyone Figured Out That Hosting Is A Total Waste

2014-05-28T17:23:00-04:00

Researchers have known for years that hosting large sporting events like the Olympics always costs more than expected and always yields less revenue and useful long-term infrastructure than estimated. Now voters and politicians in democratically elected countries are starting to realize the same thing. Potential host cities are dropping out of the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics like crazy.

Is that a luge in Times Square?

2014-02-06T16:34:00-05:00

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s vision of new sporting venues across the boroughs fizzled, and New York lost its bid for the 2012 Summer Olympics. But what if the city had tried to get the Winter Olympics instead? It would probably take more hubris than even this city can muster, but the exercise provides some telling measures of scale.

Sochi Olympic pavilion will transform into giant 3D portraits

2014-01-14T15:18:00-05:00

London-designer Asif Khan's pavilion for the Sochi 2014 Olympics is essentially a building-sized pin screen, capable of transforming its facade into 3D projections of visitors' faces. Khan designed the pavilion for MegaFon, the general partner of the Sochi Winter Olympics and one of Russia's largest telecommunications companies. Visitors can have their photo taken at 3D photo booths stationed around the pavilion and throughout MegaFon retailers preceding the games, and then watch the facade shift into gigantic portraits.

Khan also designed the Coca-Cola Beatbox Pavilion for London's Summer Olympics in 2012. Check out a test-run of the pin screen in the video below.