On March 25th, MIT Professors Joseph Sussman, James Wescoat, and Richard Samuels spoke at the “MIT Perspectives on 3.11″ Symposium hosted by the University of Tokyo. The event was chaired by Architecture Professor Toshio Otsuki and the discussant was Urban Engineering Professor Takashi Onishi, both of the University of Tokyo.
Below you will find the audio recording of the symposium, focusing on the professors’ research and findings in fields from civil engineering and systems research to landscape architecture to political science. The latter portion of the event, a discussion with Professor Onishi, will be posted soon.
On the 2nd anniversary of the Great Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, MIT Japan 3.11 Initiative director Shun Kanda, along with Matthew Bunza (Lecturer in Architecture at MIT) took part in a symposium at Columbia University / Barnard College entitled, “The Great East Japan Earthquake: Creative Responses & Social Imagination.”
Alongside other speakers such as Chim↑Pom, Jake Price, Shimpei Takeda, Yuhei Suzuki, Alisa Prager, Kirsten Homma, Susan J. Onuma, Dr. Robert Yanagisawa, and Dr. Shunichi Homma; the symposium highlighting the diverse ongoing efforts of the respective speakers, asked questions about role of creative response, and reminded us all of the enormity of the work still left to be done in Tohoku.
Special thanks to Daiyu Suzuki, Nat Andreini, and the Consortium for Japan Relief for making the event possible.
More info can be found at:
About the Symposium | NYJAPAN311 | Consortium for Japan Relief
Shun Kanda, MIT Japan 3/11 Initiative Director, delivered a talk at the Nikkei BP Smart City Week 21 Symposium in Yokohama, Japan on October 30th, 2012.
For more information:
http://expo.nikkeibp.co.jp/scw/2012/conference/international/k1.shtml
Professors Shun Kanda and James Wescoat talked about their intervention in the tsunami hardest hit town of Minami-Sanriku in Japan. An intervention, MIT Japan 3/11, was created right after the disastrous tsunami that hit Japan in March this year. The images of the damage formed the collage of our news images for many days and many posts on Facebook read, ‘God Save Japan’. The presentation titled, “Beauty of Place: An Overnight Tragedy” described how overwhelming the task was. MIT collaborated with two universities in Japan, Miyagi University and Keio University. Continue reading
On October 3rd, professor emeritus Carl Steinitz will be speaking at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design about the role of landscape and planning in the Tohoku Earthquake in Japan. See the following for details.
Mark your calendars! Professors James Wescoat and Shun Kanda will be speaking on November 14th at MIT about the Japan 3/11 Initiative in the Institute’s Art, Culture, and Technology fall lecture series entitled “Zones of Emergency: Artistic Interventions – Creative Responses to Conflict & Crisis.” Collaborator Jegen Vincent de Paul will act as respondent.