University of Tokyo – Department of Architecture

Architectural Informatics Guest Lecture : Hiromi Hosoya

Architectural Informatics Guest Lecture 10

The Industrious City – Urban Industry in the Digital Age

Date and time: January 26, 2024 (Fri.) 18:00~20:00
Venue: KAJIMA HALL (Room15), Faculty of Engineering Building 1

Host: Yasushi Ikeda Architectural Informatics Research Lab.

Hiromi Hosoya is a founding partner of Hosoya Schaefer Architects in Zurich, a studio that has received numerous international awards for its diverse scale of projects in architecture, urban design, and research. The studio stands out in Switzerland for its forward-thinking vision, innovative urban design tools and methods, and its dedicated attention to architecture and detailing. In 2021, she co-published a book called “The Industrious City – Urban Industry in the Digital Age.”

She holds a Master’s in Architecture from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. For five years, she worked at Toyo Ito & Associates in Tokyo until she established her independent practice in 2003, with Markus Schaefer. She taught at Cornell University, was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria, for 5 years. Furthermore, she led an advanced architecture design studio and an urban design studio at Harvard GSD in 2011 and 2018. Currently, she is a professor at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan.

“Cities have always been places where production and commerce, working and living are physically and functionally integrated. Only with the rise of modern industry have zoning regulations been introduced to separate these functions in space. However, what is the role of such regulations when industry is digitized increasingly emission-free, and based on innovation more than mass production? How should working and living be combined to make mobility and energy consumption become more sustainable? And what are the opportunities in creating urban areas based on social equity and resilience, in a volatile world characterized by digital disruption, migration and demographic shifts?” (The Industrious City, 2021, Lars Müller Publisher).

The Industrious City is a vision for Switzerland, and it is also a case study for beyond. It suggests directions for achieving resilience in an urban and industrial culture—by maintaining diversity and redundancy, balancing connectedness and embeddedness, managing data and matter, encouraging learning and participation, promoting subsidiarity in governance and management, and by increasing our understanding of complex adaptive systems and their dynamics.


Admission free, no reservation required. Lecture will be in English but with auto-translation subtitles Please contact the following address if you would like to watch the seminar online. Contact: Architectural Informatics Lab. arastoo@arch1.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Portrait: Jos Schmid – Visual: Hosoya Schaefer Architects
Portrait: Jos Schmid – Visual: Hosoya Schaefer Architects