Reading landscapes: Exploring drones in creative mapping

In Taking Measures across the American Landscape, James Corner and Alex
MacLean explore the ever-changing landscape from the aeroplane.1 In
this paper we replace the aeroplane with a drone and explore how drones
can advance creative mapping through a combination of drone imagery
and collage-like mapping techniques, as well as explore their use in onsite
fieldwork. Throughout our explorations, we reveal how the drone as
a media ecology mediates the designer’s understanding of the landscape
and creates new site-specific landscape knowledge. We argue that the use
of drones and drone imagery advances creative mapping by enabling a volumetric
view that provides new spatial insights. Both in fieldwork and in
the post-processing of drone imagery, the volumetric perspective helps to
reveal the landscape’s vertical structures, the human, more than human
and landscape relationships, and the tangible and material reality of the
landscape. As such, drones in creative mapping expand our visual understanding
and reading of landscapes.