Want a bespoke façade? Get a drone!

Compiled by Avinash Yadav

Photography: Courtesy Carlo Ratti Associati

Read Time: 2 mins

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Now use real-time data to customize a bespoke façade using a drone. Tech-wizards, Carlo Ratti Associati show you the way…

Carlo Ratti Associati has winged imagination to soar new heights with portable technology that employs drone formations to draw on urban facades. With this project, any façade can become a space to showcase new forms of open-source, collaborative art or the visualized heartbeat of a metropolis through real-time data.

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In its initial implementation, the project proposes to use the facades of construction sites as giant canvases. ‘Paint by Drone’ employs a set of one-metre wide UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles), each of them equipped with sensors and carrying a spray paint tank. Each drone paints with CMYK as in most traditional printing processes.

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A central management system regulates the drones’ operations in real-time, from image painting to flight, using an advanced monitoring system that precisely tracks the UAV’s position, detecting multiple devices simultaneously. Furthermore, a protective net placed on the scaffolding’s’ cover allows the drones to move into a safe space. Drones can draw content submitted digitally, via an app. The artistic input can come from either crowd-sourced platforms or from a curator orchestrating the contributions of several people.

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“Our cities are filled with blank vertical surfaces, either permanent or temporary. Scaffold sheeting, for instance, has great potential, but in fact it is mostly used in bland ways – left empty or employed for advertising”, says Professor Carlo Ratti, founder of Carlo Ratti Associati studio and Director of the Sense-able City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  “With Paint by Drone, we would like to unleash the potential of ‘phygital graffiti’.

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“This project encapsulates our vision of the city as an emergent system,” comments Antonio Atripaldi, project leader at Carlo Ratti Associati. In Berlin and in Turin this fall, the project will give life to an exciting and dynamic canvas, highlighting both cities’ thriving art scene and openness to dynamic innovations.