The Hive, a skyscraper designed for drones

A skyscraper designed to integrate drone technology into cities recently won second place in eVolo magazine’s Architecture competition. The Hive is an infrastructure project that incorporates drones into the life of New York City by creating a central terminal for personal and commercial drones.

The design by Hadeel Ayed Mohammad, Yifeng Zhao, and Chengda Zhu of the United States was conceived to address the issues challenging drones in cities (e.g no-fly zones, line of sight, etc) at a time of rapidly developing capabilities (e.g. package delivery etc.). In explaining the project eVolo writes, “The project was proposed as an alternative asset argument for the usage of the land on 432 Park Avenue, the project aims to create a central control terminal that hosts docking and charging stations for personal or commercial drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) in the center of Manhattan. The current air-zoning regulations are to be re-shaped in a vertical highway model around a tower. This centrally controlled model will be more appealing to the legislative sector as it adheres to the concerns about regulating drone traffic. The primary location of the building does not only gather the commercial power of Manhattan, but also stands away from the no-fly-zones set by the FAA.”

The “Live Façade” of the building is designed to fit nine different types of drones, categorized by the shape and scale of their landing fixtures (point, bar or ring).

What is arguably the most remarkable aspect of this award is that, of all the possible urban issues that might have been addressed, these competitors chose drones.

You can read more about the project here.