Aureum Mobility and Figurr Architects Team Up to Build Vertiports for Canadian Towns

Canada’s first electric aircraft won’t land on a patch of bare tarmac. Aureum Mobility and Figurr Architects Collective have paired up to handle the ground-side work — site selection, permitting, charging hardware and building design — for vertiports and droneports across the country.

The two firms laid out the plan in a new episode of the eVTOL Insights Podcast, where Anthony Colletti and Grant Fisk of Aureum joined Rick Rubin and Keith Johnson of Figurr. Their division of labour is fairly clean: Aureum supplies modular infrastructure and charging technology built to serve aircraft from more than one manufacturer, while Figurr brings its aviation-facility design background and takes on Canadian distribution of Aureum’s systems.

What a Community Actually Gets

The pitch goes beyond a place to plug in. The partners say they want to help municipalities and airports evaluate potential sites, work through the permitting maze and design facilities where three things happen at once: aircraft recharge, passengers transfer to local transport, and maintenance crews do their jobs without cutting corners on safety.

• Site assessment: helping towns and airports judge whether a location is viable
• Permitting: guiding projects through the approvals process
• Facility design: charging bays, passenger connections and safe maintenance space

It’s a practical, unglamorous list. And yet it’s exactly the layer that decides whether advanced air mobility arrives on schedule or stalls.

Why Remote Towns May Move First

The most interesting part of the conversation is where the pair expect early traction. For remote and underserved communities, the business case doesn’t necessarily start with passenger flights. It may start smaller — a medical delivery route, or a cargo link that beats the reliability of existing alternatives.

That framing matters. In places where road connections are seasonal or slow, an electric aircraft carrying supplies or medical goods can justify the infrastructure spend long before a taxi service makes financial sense. Build the pad and the charger for cargo, and passenger service has somewhere to land later.

The Interoperability Bet

Aureum’s modular approach is designed to handle aircraft from different manufacturers rather than locking a community into one OEM’s ecosystem. That’s a sensible hedge in a sector where designs are still evolving and operators will want flexibility.

Figurr’s role as Canadian distributor gives the partnership a local presence on the ground — useful when dealing with municipal councils, regional airports and provincial regulators who tend to prefer a familiar face across the table.

No timelines, costs or confirmed sites have been disclosed. For now, this is a partnership announcement and a conversation about method, not a construction schedule.

Still, the ground layer is where electric aviation usually gets stuck. Finding someone willing to own the permitting paperwork is half the battle.