South Korea's Tower Infinity Aspires To Be World's First 'Invisible' Tower

For the last few decades, countries all over the world have been trying to outdo each other at building the world's tallest structures. Now South Korea wants to raise the stakes further with Tower Infinity, which at a height of 1,476 feet (450 meters) will not only be the sixth tallest, but also, the world's first 'invisible' tower.

Scheduled to begin construction soon, the tower which will be built close to Seoul's Incheon International Airport so that it can be enjoyed by visitors too, is the brainchild of US-based GDS Architects.

They submitted the design for the unique building as their entry for an International Design Competition sponsored by the Korean Land and Housing Corporation in 2008. Not surprisingly, they won and though it took a few years, the building permits to turn this cool concept into a reality, have finally been granted.

The building's 'invisibility' at eye level, will be caused by an optical illusion created through the fine mix of innovative thinking, modern technology and of course, science!

Built entirely from glass, Tower Infinity will be fitted with cameras placed at three different heights on six different sides of the building. The images captured by them will be projected onto the 500 rows of LED screens positioned strategically in three disparate areas of the tower and constantly rotated, scaled and merged so that instead of the building, passersby will see a seamless panoramic scene of the activity surrounding the tower, which itself acts as an 'invisible' interface.

The architects have also added controls so that the level of invisibility can be decreased or increased at any given time, with just a switch of a button.

This means that the entire building can appear or disappear at the whim of the building manager! What would be even cooler, is if they could make parts of it disappear. In case you are concerned about how safe an invisible tower would be, it only appears that way to people looking at it from ground level. The crystalline Tower Infinity will be quite apparent from distances and is expected to glow like a 'diamond' accentuating Seoul's already impressive skyline.

If that is not cool enough, how about this? The entertainment and leisure tower which will be surrounded by a variety of beautifully landscaped gardens, will also feature the world's third highest observation deck, movie, lots of fine dining options and best of all, a water park and roller coaster! We wonder what kind of architectural war Tower Infinity is going to ignite amongst nations!

Resources: core:77.com,worldarchitecturenews.com, cnn.com