Take a look at the Hyundai Pavillion, the darkest building on earth

Any person who’s ever tried to wear black pants and a black top will likely understand that there are vastly differing shades. Black is often referred to as a colour but in technicality, it’s the absence of it.

So when it comes to true black, there is currently none darker than Vantablack VBx2, a paint specifically designed to absorb 99 per cent of light diffused onto a surface.

Combine the blackest-black currently known to man with inspired, futuristic architecture on the grand scale and what you get is something truly out of this world.

That might just be the best way to describe the Hyundai Pavilion designed by Asif Khan.

Created at the site of the PyeongChang Olympic games on bequest of Hyundai, the 35 by 35 metre structure with 10m high exterior facades is coated entirely in Vantablack VBx2.

Illuminated by a field of hanging lights like stars that appear to float in mid-air, during the day, the exterior mimics staring into space.

The fully black paint job also technically makes the pavilion the largest nanostructure in the world.

“From a distance the structure has the appearance of a window looking into the depths of outer space,” said architect Asif Khan.

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“As you approach it, this impression grows to fill your entire field of view. So on entering the building, it feels as though you are being absorbed into a cloud of blackness.”

Like entering a temple on an alien planet, inside is in contrast, all white. A space described as ‘the water room’, it’s ‘a multi-sensory hydrophobic water installation’ which emits 25,000 singular water droplets every minute.

As visitors walk through the space, a series of sensors alter the the droplets to create new rhythms of water release, causing the droplets to collide, join and split across the labyrinthine pattern floor.

In the centre, the water collects into a ‘lake’ which drains and reappears over a  few minutes.

Khan’s inspiration for this space was to imitate viewing the lights of a city from above at night.

“As your eyes adjust, you feel for a moment that the tiny water drops are at the scale of the stars,” said Khan. “A water droplet is a size every visitor is familiar with. In the project I wanted to move from the scale of the cosmos to the scale of water droplets in a few steps. The droplets contain the same hydrogen from the beginning of the universe as the stars.”

Commissioned by Hyundai in pre-emption of the release its first hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, hydrogen is the overarching theme of the monolithic structure. 

The black exterior facade of the pavilion was chosen to represent the universe, the origin of Hydrogen, whilst the interactive water droplet display in the interior was inspired by individual hydrogen molecules.

This story was first published by Stuff.co.nz