Drone Futures

UAS in Landscape and Urban Design

Paul Cureton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780815380504
• eBook ISBN: 9781351212977
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Professional Practice in Architecture

Drone Futures explores new paradigms in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in landscape and urban design. UAS or drones can be deployed with direct application to the built environment; this book explores the myriad of contemporary and future possibilities of the design medium, its aesthetic, mapping agency, AI, mobility and contribution to smart cities.

Drones present innovative possibilities, operating in a 'hover space' between human scales of landscape observation and light aircraft providing a unique resolution of space. This book shows how UAS can be utilised to provide new perspectives on spatial layout, landscape and urban conditions, data capture for construction monitoring and simulation of design proposals.

Author Paul Cureton examines both the philosophical use of these tools and practical steps for implementation by designers. Illustrated in full colour throughout, Drone Futures discusses UAS and their connectivity to other design technologies and processes, including mapping and photogrammetry, AR/VR, drone AI and drones for construction and fabrication, new mobilities, smart cities and city information models (CIMs). It is specifically geared towards professionals seeking to understand UAS applications and future development and students seeking an understanding of the role of drones and airspace in the built environment and its powerful geographic imaginary.

With international contributions, multidisciplinary sources and case studies, Drone Futures examines new powers of flight for visualising, interpreting and presenting landscapes and urban spaces of tomorrow.

37 hChapter 1: Drone aesthetics and hover spaceINTRODUCTIONHow do we understand our historical and future ideas and visions of the built environment? How do we capture data? Kevin Lynch states that,To act for near future ends and to keep the longer future open, to explore new possibilities, to maintain the ability to respond to change … can help reduce the inequality of data available for the concepts of past and future.(Lynch, 1973, p. 95)Lynch thought that people are stakeholders and have a dialogue in the future of the built environment, its near, middle and long term, whilst understanding historic concepts, plans and physical patterns of urban form. To understand our current position regarding drones and our built environment, we need to understand both historical visions in the aerial and its relationship with urbanism, as well as what the drone provides in terms of data. The aerial view provides data in terms of new unseen views and thus new concepts, photos, maps and maps that become plans. The aerial view is critical for our spaces of tomorrow; it is between landscape, architecture, planning and geography. The aim of this chapter is to understand why the aerial view is so compelling as this engagement is critical for urban futures. The aerial is a 3D space, it is invisible airspace, sometimes regulated as volumes of transitions, air territories or geo-fences, or geographically restricted due to militarised or sensitive infrastructure. The practice within this space is heavily reliant on digital infrastructure and a range of geographical principles (Ash et al., 2018). Airspace is an invisible infrastructure for new mobilities, networks and built space. But how do we start to understand it? How do we understand this digital medium? In order to do so, requires a visual literacy and decoding of urban and vertical futures. These may be ‘captured’ visions of where we are heading, self-fulfilling visions of the future of cities. The aerial has a powerful transformative force in spatial perception and unique contribution to these visions. Stuart Elden usefully suggests a volumetric understanding for airspace, as fundamental for the understanding of geopolitics (Elden, 2013).

45 hDrone aesthetics and hover space jcompass, barometer also feature in drone design avionics.4T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Credits list
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Drone aesthetics and hover space
• Chapter 2 Drone mapping and AI
• Chapter 3 Urban air mobility
• Chapter 4 Digital twins, smart cities and drones
• Conclusion
• Index