A new exhibition called ‘Flight Assembled Architecture’ is creating a buzz (or hum perhaps) in architecture schools and offices around the world. Flight Assembled Architecture is the first architectural installation assembled by flying robots, free from the touch of human hands.

The exhibition by Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello d’Andrea, in cooperation with ETH Zurich, features flying drones constructing a architectural structure of a ‘vertical village’ for 30,000 inhabitants out of foam blocks at a scale of 1:100. The real newly founded village for which this model is created, is located in the rural area of Meuse, taking advantage of an existing high speed train connection that brings its inhabitants to Paris in less than one hour. It is from this quest of an “ideal” self-sustaining habitat that the architects pursue a radical new way of thinking and materializing verticality in architecture.

Flight Assembled Architecture consists of over 1500 modules which are placed by a multitude of quadrotor helicopters, collaborating according to mathematical algorithms that translate digital design data to the behaviour of the flying machines.

The exhibition at the FRAC Center in Orleans, France, continues until February 19th.

Flight Assembled Architecture/Architectures volantes from FRAC Centre on Vimeo.