From Smithsonian Magazine's Design Decoded blog:
Shura City (image: Asher J. Kohn)
As drones become increasingly common tools of war and surveillance on
the battlefield and in our cities, how are architects and designers
responding? Previously, we’ve looked at personal counter-surveillance measures,
but it’s likely that future designers will move beyond the scale of the
individual to larger projects such as drone-proof architecture or
perhaps even urban-scale counter-surveillance. Concerned about what he
sees as the improper or unjustified use of drones, law student Asher J.
Kohn has imagined how an anti-drone city might look and function. This
isn’t a science fiction scenario, but a seriously considered urban
design strategy. In fact, considering that the speculative plan for what
Kohn has named “Shura City” is designed to counter the most
technologically sophisticated weapons ever developed, the proposal is
surprisingly low-tech.
Shura City disrupts the machines’ equipment and confuses remote
operators through the careful use of materials and design strategies.
“What this project proposes is a new way to think about space. Drone
warfare proposes that every inch of land is (and all of its inhabitants
are) part of the battle space,” says Kohn. The anti-drone city must
be logical enough for inhabitants to navigate, yet random enough to
befuddle automated surveillance. Kohn, not a trained designer, is vague
on the interior layout, but suggests a flexible, adaptable plan inspired
by
Moshe Safdie’s Habitat,
the high-density, modular residential project built as part of the 1967
Montreal Expo. Key features of Shura City include colored glass-block
windows to prevent unwanted surveillance, a transparent roof enclosure
that provides both thermal control to undermine drones’ heat sensors as
well as a complex structural and lighting system to create a visual
interference for drone tracking systems. This confusion is all carefully
optimized to prevent individual targeting. Minarets (or church steeples
or other religious towers) surround the city; an important cultural
gesture gesture to unite the community that has the added effect of
interrupting drone flight patterns....
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