Mori Building

Imagining the Tokyo's Future Through Visualizations of Population Data

Takram designed and developed visualizations for the “TOKYO URBAN STUDIES” project at the Mori Building Urban Lab, a research facility established to reflect on the future of Tokyo, with a task to investigate Tokyo as a city from a multifaceted perspective and think about its future.

Population change visualisation for TOKYO URBAN STUDIES

TOKYO URBAN STUDIES uses a scale model of Tokyo as a canvas for projection mapping of various data such as transportation networks, topography, coastline alterations, and green spaces. Based on various datasets from the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research, and the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, we visualized the population projection of Tokyo from 2015 to 2050. The projections were accompanied by various graphs showing population pyramids, the rates of unmarried people, and long-term population trends over the next 600 years, providing insight from both an intuitive and rational point of view.

Mori Building Urban Lab

Mori Building, since its founding in 1959, has been constantly thinking about Tokyo's future under its mission: "create cities, nurture cities". For more than 20 years, Mori Building has been developing proprietary technology to create models of Tokyo and compare them to same-scale models of New York and Shanghai, also created by Mori Building. Through such comparisons, Mori Building has deepened its discussions with experts in various fields regarding the future of Tokyo as a major international city. In view of the increasing competition among major international cities to attract global resources and knowledge, the Mori Building Urban Lab will support the process of considering key issues, such as how Tokyo should evolve, what kind of urban lifestyles cities should offer and what should be done to improve Tokyo's international competitiveness.

The facility measures approximately 1,670 square meters in total. The Theater Room, an impressively spacious area of about 740 square meters, has a large model of Tokyo (length 15 m x width 24 m; 200 square meters) and a huge 360-degree screen on the wall surrounding the city model. In addition, with some 30 high-definition projectors scattered throughout the room and various projection mappings created with state-of-the-art video technology, Mori Building Urban Lab offers various tools for conceptualizing, considering and discussing the future of the international city of Tokyo from diverse perspectives. Going forward, Mori Building will continue to contribute to Tokyo's magnetic power by creating and nurturing cities.

From the press release announcing the launch of Mori Building Urban Lab