The Event Horizon Pavilion translates the physics of a rotating black hole into an architectural, luminous, and sonic installation. Combining astrophysics, computational design, composite materials, robotic fabrication, and sound, it transforms phenomena into spatial experience.
The concept originated from translating the spacetime deformation generated by a black hole into geometry. The design highlights how spacetime, although locally approximated through Euclidean geometry at human scales, becomes globally curved under gravity, as described by General Relativity. It thereby emphasizes the difference between local experience and the behavior of spacetime.
A black-hole system includes the event horizon, accretion disk, black-hole shadow, photon sphere, corona, and relativistic jets. The event horizon is a boundary beyond which neither matter nor radiation can escape. The heated matter orbiting within the accretion disk constitutes the system’s visible component. Gravity bends light trajectories, producing the shadow and photon ring. The corona contains hot plasma, while relativistic jets propel matter outward at near-light speeds.
In the pavilion, the event horizon is interpreted as a boundary between the known and the unknown. The design process employed GYOTO, a program that computes orbits and ray-traced images using spacetime metrics defined within General Relativity. Combined with gyotoy, its visualization environment, it provided coordinates describing photon trajectories bent by spacetime curvature around a rotating black hole. These trajectories formed the basis for the pavilion’s luminous paths.
To reconcile the physical model with fabrication constraints, the geometry was rationalized into a trefoil-knot configuration. Its symmetry defines three membrane-like wings around a central void. A parametric workflow generates the knot and ribbon surface, extracts one wing, and replicates it through rotations of 120 degrees.