There’s a scene in Mad Men that perfectly captures the peculiar social dynamics of elevator rides. Don Draper and his colleagues stand in awkward silence, maintaining that unspoken elevator etiquette—eyes forward, minimal conversation, an almost ritualistic performance of personal space in a confined box. It’s a masterful portrayal of how elevators have become these liminal spaces in our urban lives, where time seems to stand still and social norms take on their own unique character.
This scene has always fascinated me, not just for its dramatic tension, but because it represents something deeper about our relationship with vertical mobility. In those few seconds of vertical travel, we’re participating in a ritual that hasn’t fundamentally changed since the first elevator operator called out “Ground floor!” in the 1800s.
The Poetry of Vertical Movement
My fascination with elevators goes beyond their mechanical function. There’s something almost poetic about these metal boxes that defy gravity with such nonchalance. As a child, I was captivated by the buttons, each number promising a different world, the mechanical whirr a prelude to discovery. The gentle sway as the cab starts moving, that peculiar sensation in your stomach—it’s a daily reminder that we’re engaging with a technology that would have seemed like magic to our ancestors.
But what truly captured my imagination was the human element—those early elevator operators who turned each journey into a theatrical performance. They were part conductor, part host, part storyteller. In the golden age of department stores and grand hotels, a skilled elevator operator could make the simple act of moving between floors feel like a luxury experience.
The Vertical Dimension We Forgot
After co-creating the future of mobility at Ola & Ola Electric, something struck me—everyone’s obsessing over getting from point A to point B, but what about -1 to 30? While we’ve seen incredible innovations in horizontal transportation (autonomous vehicles, hyperloops, electric scooters), our vertical mobility systems have remained fundamentally unchanged since Elisha Otis demonstrated his safety elevator at the 1854 World’s Fair.
Yes, there have been improvements in speed, safety, and efficiency. And yes, there are glimpses of radical innovation, like ThyssenKrupp’s MULTI system—a concept that reimagines elevators as rope-free capsules that can move both vertically and horizontally, like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But beyond such occasional breakthroughs, vertical mobility has remained surprisingly stagnant.
The Spark: A Delivery Driver’s Journey
It hit me one mundane evening, as I stood in my balcony waiting for my Uber Eats delivery. I watched the delivery person park their vehicle, enter the building, take the elevator up, find my apartment, and then reverse the whole journey. This “last vertical mile” was adding significant “down time” to each delivery. We’ve had dumb waiters for food delivery in buildings for decades—so why not reimagine this for the age of e-commerce?
Learning from History: The Milk Door Revolution
Early examples of milk doors from the 1800s - pioneering automated home delivery
Interestingly, we’ve solved similar problems before. In the 18th century, American homes featured “milk doors”—small, insulated doors built into walls that allowed milkmen to deliver fresh milk without disturbing the household. These ingenious solutions were an early example of automated home delivery.
The Current State of Vertical Logistics
Current elevator usage patterns in North American buildings
The inefficiencies in our current system are staggering. While Amazon has introduced locker boxes and some buildings have package rooms, we’re still largely relying on human couriers to physically transport packages up and down buildings.


Introducing Onka: The Wonka of Vertical Delivery
My love for voxel art led me to create these initial concept renderings
Engineering the Future
Named with a playful nod to Willy Wonka’s fantastical factory, Onka is a speculative yet feasible autonomous delivery system that reimagines how goods move vertically in buildings. Think of it as a smart, modular network of tubes and boxes that can transport packages directly from ground level to your apartment window or balcony.
The system consists of four main components:
- A ground or terrace-level processing unit that receives and sorts packages
- A network of smart tubes that run along the building’s exterior
- Individual “mailboxes” installed at apartment windows or balconies
- APIs for e-commerce platforms to integrate with the system
*Early concept sketches exploring the Onka system*




The Gravity of Innovation: Learning from Chutes
Long before we dreamed of autonomous delivery systems, we mastered the art of moving things downward. The humble garbage chute, a standard feature in apartment buildings since the early 1900s, proves we’ve long understood the efficiency of vertical transport—at least in one direction. These simple tubes, using nothing but gravity, have quietly revolutionized waste management in high-rises for over a century.

The same principle found its way into other aspects of urban life. Laundry chutes in homes, mail chutes in office buildings (like the iconic Cutler Mail Chute system that once adorned the halls of America’s grandest buildings), and even pneumatic tube systems in hospitals and banks—all testament to our ingenuity in moving things vertically.

The iconic Cutler Mail Chute system in action - Source: 99% Invisible
But here’s the fascinating part: we’ve mastered “down” but struggled with “up.” It’s as if we’ve been content to let gravity do all the work, while the challenge of efficient upward transport remains largely unsolved. This asymmetry in vertical mobility—this one-way relationship with gravity—became a key insight in developing Onka.
Conclusion: Beyond the Vertical Divide

When I look out my window at the skyline of modern cities, I see more than just buildings reaching toward the clouds. I see countless vertical highways, most of them invisible, waiting to be reimagined. The future of urban mobility isn’t just about autonomous vehicles cruising our streets or flying taxis dotting our skies—it’s about transforming these static vertical spaces into dynamic channels of movement.
Onka emerged from this vision. It’s a challenge to our assumption that vertical transport must follow the same patterns established in the 1800s. Just as the elevator transformed architecture and urban life, enabling the very concept of skyscrapers, the next revolution in vertical mobility could reshape how we think about urban space and community.
Note: This is a speculative design concept. All concept images and renderings are original works created for this project. Onka is a registered trademark.