World's First Invisible Skyscraper Disappears With Optical Technology

How do you build the best skyscraper in the world? You don’t make it the tallest. You don’t make it the fanciest. Instead, you just make it invisible. When I first read about this, the first thing I thought about were the pilots who might accidentally crash into it. Of course, it’s not really invisible. It will just appear to disappear with the use of optical technology. Construction on this skyscraper in South Korea is just beginning, and when it’s finished, it will surely be fantastic.

It’s called Infinity Tower or City Tower, and it’s being built by GDS Architects on the outskirts of Seoul. According to their website, “The tower subtly demonstrates Korea’s rising position in the world by establishing its powerful presence through diminishing its presence. Korea will have the unique position of having the best tower by having an anti-tower.”

So how does optical technology work? It doesn’t seem that complicated. The facade of the skyscraper will have high tech LEDs all over it. Those LEDs not only work with projectors, but they’ll also work with eighteen perfectly placed optical cameras. The cameras will be set to take real time pictures of what is happening behind the skyscraper (from whatever your perspective is). Those cameras will then put those pictures together into a panorama and display them on the skyscraper’s surface.

What this means is that it could seem like you are looking through the skyscraper to the other side, as if it wasn’t there. It will of course just be a massive illusion. But that’s not all – sometimes instead of implementing this optical technology, the skyscraper will be used as ad space so passengers in the airplanes passing by will be able to be marketed to while they are peering out the windows of the plane. Now that’s what I call versatile. This is going to be incredible when it’s finished. There is no completion date set at this time.