Drones for Architects

New Capabilities for the Construction Sector, How to Get Started and How to Navigate the Law

Illustration Evgenia Barinova

My process is quite instinctive. When the time is right, I release one of the drones from my belt, like reaching for a wide-angle telephoto lens.” Fernando Guerra

UAS collecting data from the air. Image © Noumena

Drones, or ‘aerial robots’, as we prefer to say, offer us a new point of perspective, a holistic representation of the built and unbuilt environment” Noumena

Aerial average temperature data gathered by drone and environmental sensing platform. Image © NERO / Noumena

We consider scale an obsolete sorting method, used to describe the operational context of designers, architects, engineers, construction industry and end-users. Instead, our taxonomy is mostly designed by a data-driven decision making process.” Noumena

Noumena custom fabricates or adapts each of their drones to suit project requirements. Image © Noumena

From many angles, including legality, when you pick up the control and send a drone whizzing into the air, you are still entering the wild west.

NERO’s drones translate varied environmental conditions into data. Image © NERO / Noumena

In the US, the FAA currently stipulates commercial drones must not fly over 400 feet high, within 5 miles of an airport and at all times remain in the operator’s line of sight.

Native FAA UAS facility map data user interface by Kittyhawk Design. Image © Kittyhawk
Airspace Authorization for the Commercial Drone Industry. Image © Airmap

You often can’t trust the sensors on the off-the-shelf drones. Always shoot with RAW and be careful not to overexpose your footage. And watch out for seagulls” Fernando Guerra

Caledonian Somosaguas housing in Madrid. Image © Fernando Guerra

Very often we focus on how things are made, forgetting why it is important to adopt new digital solutions […] innovation is produced only in experimental environments which allow to try, invent, fail.” Noumena

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Architect and researcher based in Tanzania, East Africa. Follow for discussions on how global developments are shaping the built environment👇

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Hannah Wood

Architect and researcher based in Tanzania, East Africa. Follow for discussions on how global developments are shaping the built environment👇