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WELCOME to the weird world of blue cones. No, it’s not a model of a surreal futuristic city, but a room vital to ensuring that satellites collect accurate environmental data. To enter, you go through what must be one of the strangest-looking doors on the planet (below).

Inside, you can hear your own heart beat. That’s because it’s an echo-free zone called an anechoic chamber. Rather than killing sound echoes, though, this one absorbs microwaves, making it perfect for calibrating antennas that use microwaves to monitor environmental change.

, who runs the chamber at the Technical University of Denmark, has used it to test antennas for measuring the . Data on both are critical to monitoring and analysing weather patterns and climate change, he says. Pivnenko had the echo-absorbing cones made in blue instead of the traditional black to make the working environment less gloomy.

Photographer snapped the chamber as part of a project to capture the beauty of otherwise utilitarian scientific and industrial spaces. “You’re not used to being in a room with abstract spikes that look really threatening, but which are really colourful, almost like a movie set or fantasy,” he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Echo-free zone”