xLAB Summer Program 2019: RESILIENCE

Each year a new programmatic theme offers a research topic on the Tokyo 2020 Olympics: Community (2017), Mobility (2018), and Resilience (2019). The Tokyo 2020 Olympics present a 21st Century case study in which to study, develop, and test new strategies on the future of the city and the architectural discipline.

2018 Symposium: Reimagining Tokyo’s Mobility. In 2019, the Redefining Resilience in Tokyo Symposium will take place. 

The 2019 xLAB Summer Program will focus on Tokyo’s resilience and consists of studios, seminar lectures, faculty lectures, and a symposium at The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (Miraikan). Cities in the 21st century face a growing number of technological, social, and environmental challenges. Changes happening at an unprecedented speed and degree of unpredictability create an urgency to redefine strategies for designing buildings, cities, and environments. For urban systems to respond to various challenges, unpredictabilities, and time modes, it is necessary to develop a softness and redundancy that allows them to fluctuate. Resilience is the capacity for an entity or system to respond to change. The concept of Resilience in the city will be explored from the perspectives of technology, society, and ecology, to discuss, test, and share design methods to increase the resilience of the built and natural environments.