We participated in an event held in Omishima, Imabari, Ehime Prefecture on May 18, 2024, to mark the first anniversary of the Shimanami Technology Community College (“Shima Tech”).

This community college is an initiative launched as part of the Cognitive Designing Excellence project, which aims to explore future community and city designs and put them into practice through collaboration between industry, government, academia, and Graduate School of Engineering and Faculty of Engineering of the University of Tokyo and IBM Japan, Ltd. Kajima is participating in this project as part of its CSR activities.

A hands-on experience event was held for elementary school students in Imabari on that day. Children worked in cooperation to assemble 32 wooden parts that had been jointly designed and created by Kajima and Superstructure, a Singaporean company, to allow children to experience the joy of architecture and manufacturing and completed a 150 cm-high 32-sided object. The shapes of three islands in Imabari, namely Omishima, Hakatajima and Oshima, were cut out from the object, named “Shimanami Tomoshibi (Torch) Ball,” and individual children enjoyed the work they had created together in their own ways, for example, by going inside it to play and taking photographs.