British architect Norman Foster, 80, is one of Britain’s most prolific architects of his generation. In 1999 he won the Pritzker Architecture Prize, considered the Nobel Prize of architecture. Founder and chairman of Foster + Partners, he is known for high-tech, high-profile glass-and-steel buildings. His company’s most famous buildings include 30 St. Mary Axe, London; Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich; and Wembley Stadium.
The drone-port project in Rwanda is considered one of Foster + Partners’ most intriguing, conceived with Jonathan Ledgard, director of Switzerland-based Afrotech. Ledgard describes himself as a thinker on the future of Africa, according to TheGuardian. The plan is to create a network of cargo drones that can e-commerce, spare parts, electronics, medical supplies and blood to hard-to-reach African areas.
Because the drone ports will be located at inaccessible places, they’ll have to be built using accessible materials. They’ll adapt to local conditions that include making local earth into bricks and using local stones for foundations, TheGuardian reports.
The drone ports will be shelters where drones can safely land and unload, but they’ll serve multiple other purposes including, for example a health clinic, digital fabrication shop, mail room, and e-commerce trading hub, allowing them to become part of local community life.
The goal is for the drone ports to become economically sustainable hubs of activity where health care workers and lab technicians mingle with market traders and ordinary people going about their daily lives, SciDev.net reports. The hope is that cargo drones bring a transport revolution for people in Rwanda and the region – those needing social transformation the most.
The proposed Rwandan drone ports made it to TIME’s round-up of the best inventions of 2015 that are making the world better, smarter and a little more fun.
Also on the 25 Best Inventions list are shoes you can tie with one hand and a smart cooking pan that teaches you how to cook on Bluetooth.
Workers will soon break ground on three drone ports, but the first phase will be “a relatively modest beginning,” Foster said, according to TIME. But, he adds, “it could be a catalyst,” helping to solve an array of pressing health issues and creating a model for other countries looking to regulate commercial drone use.
Foster told ArchitectsJournal that new technology, including drones and self-driving cars, will transform architecture and our cities.
“In the future drones will allow us to carry any cargo safely, taking congestion off the roads,” he said. “The result will mean we can bring back the civic realm. Life in a city and the architecture of the city is directly related to the civic realm.”
This initial plan for three drone ports, to be completed by 2020, will enable the network to send supplies to 44 percent of Rwanda, according to the Foster + Partners website. Subsequent phases of the project could see more than 40 drone ports across Rwanda. The country’s central location could allow expansion to neighboring countries such as Congo.
Foster: “Rwanda’s challenging geographical and social landscape makes it an ideal test-bed for the drone port project,” Foster said. “This project can have massive impact through the century and save lives immediately.”
The gap between the population and infrastructural growth is increasing exponentially in Africa, Foster said. “The dearth of terrestrial infrastructure has a direct impact on the ability to deliver life-giving supplies… We require immediate bold, radical solutions to address this issue. The drone port project is about doing ‘more with less’, capitalizing on the recent advancements in drone technology – something that is usually associated with war and hostilities – to make an immediate life-saving impact in Africa.”
Just a third of Africans live within 2 kilometres of an all-season road. There are no continental highways, almost no tunnels, and not enough bridges in Africa, according to the Foster + Partners website.
It would require impossible amounts of investment in roads and railways to catch up with Africa’s population growth, which is set to double to 2.2 billion by 2050. “An infrastructural leap is essential using drone technology and clean energy systems to surmount the challenges of the future,” the company says. “Just as mobile phones dispensed with landlines, cargo drones can transcend geographical barriers such as mountains, lakes, and unnavigable rivers without the need for large-scale physical infrastructure.”
Foster + Partners have designed a NASA Mars settlement for four astronauts that can be printed on a 3D printer by a staff of semi-autonomous robots.
Foster’s firm envisions a 93-square-meter habitat made from regolith — the loose soil and rocks discovered on the surface of Mars, the Red Planet, according to Decor10blog.
