2014-10-08

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2014-10-08
Mori Building Co., Ltd.

Mori Building Joins MIT Media Lab

Will Collaborate with Media Lab Researchers on Futuristic Global City Design

Tokyo, October 8, 2014 – Mori Building, a leading urban landscape developer, announced today that it has joined the MIT Media Lab as a consortium member, and will conduct a collaborative research on designing global cities of the future.

Mori Building's first collaboration as a member company of the Media Lab will focus on a new initiative to design global cities of the future. This involves turning Mori Building's landmark Hills Facilities–located throughout Tokyo–into platforms for applying innovative technologies and expertise to new urban cities that inspire further innovations.

The IT revolution has affected social structures and human relationships worldwide, transforming hierarchical societies into highly networked societies where artists, scientists, designers and technicians will collaborate on an interdisciplinary basis to jointly bring about new ideas and innovations that transform people's professional and personal lives. In the midst of this transformation, global cities are now expected to integrate cutting-edge technologies and trends to support the evolving lifestyles of residents.

Media Lab Director Joi Ito and two Media Lab faculty members, Neri Oxman, Sony Corporation Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences and Kevin Slavin, Benesse Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Science, will serve on this project.

Quote: Shingo Tsuji, President & CEO, Mori Building
"As Japan points towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympic games, I firmly believe that the next several years will be very critical in designing a future of our nation. MIT Media Lab has the power to integrate ideas for the creation of new conceptual images; in other words, the power to visualize things yet to be seen. We look forward to adapting their cutting-edge technologies and out-of-the-box thinking to develop leading futuristic global cities. We are pleased that Mori's Hills facilities will serve as a catalyst to transform Japan."

Quote: Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
"In participating in this collaborative research project with Mori Building, the MIT Media Lab looks forward to contributing a fresh, creative approach to urban development. Drawing on expertise ranging from developing new building materials based on nature to innovative techniques in synthetic biology, the Lab will introduce new ideas for reinventing tomorrow's cities. We regard this project as a great opportunity to utilize Mori Building's Hills facilities for open research, and look forward to working with Mori Building to realize our vision for designing more beautiful, livable, and sustainable cities."

MIT Media Lab, Joichi Ito, Neri Oxman

■About MIT Media Lab
Actively promoting a unique, antidisciplinary culture, the MIT Media Lab goes beyond known boundaries and disciplines, encouraging the most unconventional mixing and matching of seemingly disparate research areas. It creates disruptive technologies that happen at the edges, pioneering such areas as wearable computing, tangible interfaces, and affective computing. Today, faculty members, research staff, and students at the Lab work in 25 research groups on more than 350 projects that range from digital approaches for treating neurological disorders, to a stackable, electric car for sustainable cities, to advanced imaging technologies that can "see around a corner." The Lab is committed to looking beyond the obvious to ask the questions not yet asked–questions whose answers could radically improve the way people live, learn, express themselves, work, and play.

■Joichi Ito, Director, MIT Media Lab
Joichi Ito is the Director of the MIT Media Lab. He is a Board Member of The Sony Corporation, The New York Times Company, The MacArthur Foundation, The Knight Foundation, Creative Commons and co-founder and board member of Digital Garage an Internet company in Japan. He is on board of a number of non-profit organizations including The Mozilla Foundation and WITNESS.
He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan, Digital Garage and Infoseek Japan and was an early stage investor in Twitter, Six Apart, Wikia, Flickr, Last.fm, Kickstarter, Path and other Internet companies. He is the Guild Custodian of the World of Warcraft guild, We Know (http://weknow.to/). He is a PADI IDC Staff Instructor, an Emergency First Responder Instructor and a Divers Alert Network (DAN) Instructor Trainer. Ito was named by Businessweek as one of the 25 Most Influential People on the Web in 2008. In 2011, he was chosen by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of the "Top 100 Global Thinkers". In 2011, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oxford Internet Institute in recognition of his role as one of the world's leading advocates of Internet freedom. In 2011 and 2012, Ito was chosen by Nikkei Business as one of the 100 most influential people for the future of Japan. Ito received the degree of Doctor of Literature, honoris causa, from The New School in 2013.

■Neri Oxman, Professor, Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab
Architect and designer Neri Oxman is the Sony Corporation Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Lab, where she founded and directs the Mediated Matter design research group. Her group explores the unification between digital and biological design fabrication.
Oxman was named to ICON's list of the top 20 most influential architects to shape our future (2009), and to one of the 100 most creative people by FASTCOMPANY (2009). In 2008, she was named "Revolutionary Mind" by SEED Magazine. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA (NYC) and is part of the museum's permanent collection. In 2012 the Centre Georges Pompidou Museum (Paris, France) acquired her works for its permanent collection. Other exhibitions include the Smithsonian Institute (Washington, DC), Museum of Science (Boston, MA), FRAC Collection (Orleans, France), and the 2010 Beijing Biennale. She is included in prestigious private collections and has received numerous awards including a 40 Under 40 Building Design + Construction Award (2012), a Graham Foundation Carter Manny Award (2008), the International Earth Award for Future-Crucial Design (2009), and a METROPOLIS Next Generation Award (2009). Oxman coined the term "material ecology" to describe her work, implementing the science of ecology to the world of the artificial.

Please refer to the PDF file for more information.

Please address inquires regarding this press release to:

Moichi Watanabe, Soan Xu, or Yu Yagi, Public Relations, Mori Building Co., Ltd.

Location Roppongi Hills Mori Tower, P.O.Box 1, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-6155, Japan

Tel 03-6406-6606

Fax 03-6406-9306

E-mail koho@mori.co.jp