Design of the future: apartment block with drone delivery areas

An architecture firm in Canberra, Australia, has created digital renderings of an upcoming development, including drone delivery areas for residents to safely collect their parcels. JUDD Studio has created the futuristic design for the upcoming 152-unit East Garden Apartments.

The 3,196-square-meter (34,401-square-feet) block located in the Gungahlin Town Center will house the future apartments that include some pretty cool features.

The block, located on the corner of Kate Crace Street and Efkarpidis Street, was originally going to be used for Defense Housing Australia’s head office. The developer, Glav Corp, now wants the area to be a mixture of residential and commercial properties.

This new proposal includes parcel lockers, community noticeboard areas, apiary and private rooftop community garden areas for each building, and shared access to a commercial/residential lifestyle podium.

There’s one more thing: The block is looking to build a dedicated drone delivery area that will allow the residents and businesses to get goods delivered by drone safely without getting in the way of anyone or posing a safety risk.

Currently, three buildings have been proposed with interconnects between all of them. They will have a combination of 92 one-bedroom, 56 two-bedroom, and 11 three-bedroom apartments, with 20% being adaptable.

Over the last five years or so, drone delivery has been brought into the public eye as a great way to deliver goods. Delivery drones have the main advantage of delivering something small in a short amount of time. Going a little north from Canberra to Queensland, Google’s Wing Aviation has been delivering small goods, coffee, food, medicine, and hardware for some time now with great success.

As Wing’s solution doesn’t require infrastructure to be built at the delivery location, the drone stays in the air and lowers the package. While this is safe, there is always a chance that something could go wrong. Having a dedicated area for drone deliveries to drop packages without anyone around it is a much safer solution and would normalize the use of drones.

Photo: JUDD Studio