2016-08-02

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2016-08-02
Mori Building Co., Ltd.

Mori Building to Stage Innovative City Forum 2016

Presenting from Toranomon a vision of urban landscapes & lifestyles 20 years in the future

Tokyo, August 2, 2016 – Mori Art Museum, The Academy Hills, an adult-education institute operated by Mori Building and the Mori Memorial Foundation announced today they will stage an Innovative City Forum (ICF) 2016 event at their new Toranomon Hills complex on October 19th and October 20th.

ICF 2016 will focus on how lifestyles in cities like Tokyo might evolve in the future, influenced by developments such as artificial intelligence, and aims to present a clear vision of urban landscapes and lifestyles 20 years from now. The theme of the two-day forum will be "Shaping Mirai Tokyo" – "mirai" meaning "future" in Japanese. It will feature three sessions, including one focusing on how Tokyo might change over the next 20 years, starting with its planned transformation into the Olympic host city of 2020.

In keynote discussions, opinion leaders will outline their vision of cities of the future; they will include British architect Thomas Heatherwick, Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Principal Scientist at Google, and Gerfried Stocker, Artistic Director at Ars Electronica, an Austrian cultural, educational and scientific institute.

The three sessions will be as follows:
・Leading-edge Technologies Session
Hiroaki Kitano, President and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, and Neri Oxman, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab, will lead panel discussions on the themes of "Symbiosis with Artificial Intelligence" and "New Metabolism: Krebs Cycle of Creativity".

・Art and Creativity Session
American contemporary artist Tom Sachs will lead a discussion on the topic of "The Universe and Living in This Extreme Environment", looking at how future lifestyles might be shaped by an increasingly harsh living environment, and the kinds of architectures and urban cultures that might emerge. Architects from Malaysia and Vietnam will additionally lead a discussion on "Urban Heritage: Regeneration and the Future".

・"Future Tokyo" Session
Heizo Takenaka, Professor Emeritus at Keio University, will moderate a discussion about Tokyo lifestyles in the year 2035. The discussion will address how Tokyo’s development will be influenced by urban planning leading up to the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, and will look at the kinds of products and services likely to result from new technology and evolving values.

The ICF 2016 is sponsored by the "World Forum on Sport and Culture", an event hosted by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science & Technology (MEXT) in Kyoto and Tokyo during 19-22 October 2016. This will be a kick-off event designed to help promote the creation of tangible and intangible legacies from major sporting events.

Through the ICF 2016, Mori Building Co. Ltd. aims to open up the topic of "the design of future cities" to global discussion from Toranomon Hills, its new global business center showcasing business innovation.

Please refer to the PDF file for more information.

Please address inquires regarding this press release to:

Mori Building Co., Ltd. Public Relations

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