DUBAI AIRSHOW 2023: Skyportz Releases Modular Sustainable Vertistop, Collaborates with Contreras Earl Architecture and Arup

Sky­portz has released this week, in con­junc­tion with the Dubai Air­show, its lat­est ver­ti­port (VP) design which fills a gap in the mar­ket for pri­vate­ly owned VPs for pub­lic usage on com­pact sites, reports a press release.

The con­cept behind this design is to keep the con­struc­tion costs to a min­i­mum by util­is­ing mod­u­lar design and a small foot­print. This design lends itself to retro­fitting exist­ing build­ings.

Clem New­ton-Brown, CEO of Sky­portz, com­ment­ed, “We have in our sta­ble now, designs for a large pub­lic ver­ti­port, a small­er one for pub­lic water­fronts, and a tiny Ver­ti­port-in-Box for pri­vate usage. With this lat­est Sky­portz Vertistop™, we are fill­ing a gap in the mar­ket for a pub­lic ver­ti­port that is com­pact and afford­able for prop­er­ty devel­op­ers want­i­ng to add one to their exist­ing sites. Land is expen­sive in urban loca­tions, and we believe that sim­ple set down and pick up ver­ti­ports in prime loca­tions will have a huge role to play in an Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem.”

He added, “It could be placed on a rooftop, in a car park, or where there is a space with a min­i­mum of 30x30 metres. By keep­ing the foot­print tight and the pas­sen­ger han­dling facil­i­ties under­neath the pad, we can pro­vide a sim­i­lar cus­tomer expe­ri­ence to our larg­er ver­ti­ports”.

The Sky­portz Vertistop is designed for a quick turn­around and rapid through­put. Sky­portz antic­i­pates only pro­vid­ing charg­ing facil­i­ties as a back up at some, but not all loca­tions.

New­ton-Brown explained, “Air­craft only pro­vide a return when they are in the air and there is cer­tain­ly a place for this style of ver­ti­port that encour­ages a quick turn­around with charg­ing done at oth­er, but larg­er facil­i­ties. Com­pact vertistops will enable us to achieve more pas­sen­ger des­ti­na­tions clos­er to where peo­ple wish to go.”

The release states, “The beau­ty of this design is that should a prop­er­ty own­er have a larg­er site then addi­tion­al land­ing pads can be pro­vid­ed adja­cent at ground lev­el, with­out spend­ing any more on a larg­er build­ing. This would then open the way for wait­ing bays for air­craft to charge.”

The Sky­portz Vertistop has been designed by Con­tr­eras Earl Archi­tec­ture with assis­tance from Arup to ensure that it is not just “a beau­ti­ful and func­tion­al build­ing”, but that it also ful­fils the expec­ta­tions for sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

Rafael Con­tr­eras, Direc­tor of Con­tr­eras Earl Archi­tec­ture, said, “By embrac­ing the lat­est tech­nolo­gies, we are lib­er­at­ed from tra­di­tion­al build­ing prac­tices and forms, and free to explore more for­ward-think­ing ideas. This land­mark build­ing is the result of address­ing many dif­fer­ent impor­tant para­me­ters includ­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty, con­text, cli­mate, com­mu­ni­ty and the user expe­ri­ence. The ver­ti­port will fea­ture a high-per­for­mance roof designed to be struc­tural­ly robust, light­weight and sus­tain­able owing to its alu­mini­um mono­coque struc­ture. This is the same sys­tem employed in the man­u­fac­tur­ing of cars and air­craft.”

Richard Vin­cent of Arup, added, “The infra­struc­ture and build­ings facil­i­tat­ing these inno­v­a­tive trans­porta­tion modes must be designed with cir­cu­lar econ­o­my prin­ci­ples, cli­mate resilience and zero emis­sions in order to achieve the best pos­si­ble results for our plan­et and local com­mu­ni­ties alike.”

Sky­portz and Con­tr­eras Earl Archi­tec­ture are seek­ing glob­al con­struc­tion part­ners to man­u­fac­ture and install their ver­ti­port designs under licence.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.skyportz.com

https://www.contrerasearl.com

https://www.arup.com/

(images: Skyportz/Contreras Earl Archi­tec­ture)