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High-tech race to map Ukraine's damaged historic buildings
Many of Ukraine's historic monuments have been destroyed in the three months since Russia invaded, but cultural experts are working to conserve their memory using cutting-edge technology.
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French engineer and specialist in 3D data acquisition Emmanuel Durand uses his laser-scanner in Kharkiv on May 28, 2022, to map the architecture of the damaged building of the Faculty of Economics of Karazin National University. (AFP/Genya Savilov)
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any of Ukraine's historic monuments have been destroyed in the three months since Russia invaded, but cultural experts are working to conserve their memory using cutting-edge technology and 3D scans.
One of them is volunteer French engineer Emmanuel Durand, a specialist in 3D data acquisition, who is assisting a bevy of architects, engineers, historic building experts and a museum director to record buildings in Kyiv, Lviv, Chernigiv and Kharkiv.
Durand steps over a jumbled pile of beams and crunches over the rubble that was once Kharkiv's 19th-century fire station.
He plants his laser scanner, a sort of tripod with a pivoting head, in a strategic corner of the severely damaged building.
The redbrick fire station and its watchtower, built in 1887, are a monument to Kharkiv's industrial revolution.
Durand's gadget records the building from all angles.
"The scanner records 500,000 points per second. We'll get 10 million points from this location. Then we'll change location and go round the whole building, outside and inside. A billion points in all," he explains.
