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Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 4:18 pm Post subject: Minoru Mori, Japanese real estate magnate dies |
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Minoru Mori, Japanese real estate magnate dies
Updated: 13 Mar 2012
Minoru Mori
Minoru Mori, who was one of Japan’s most influential developers and built China’s tallest building, died March 8 of a heart ailment. He was 77.
Mori Towers Tokyo is a 54-story high rise building designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox that houses an art museum, restaurants, cafes, clinics, stores, and offices.
Minoru Mori (森 稔 Mori Minoru, August 24, 1934 – March 8, 2012) was considered to be one of Japan's most powerful and influential building tycoon.Mr. Mori, from Kyoto, co-founded Mori Building with his father, Taikichiro, in 1959, after graduating from Tokyo University and and became president and CEO of Mori Building in 1993, of which he and his older brother Kei's (a university professor) families own 100%. He owned 12.74% of Sunwood Corporation. Minoru and his brother Akira have been listed on the Forbes list of the world's richest men.
With his visions of a “vertical garden city,” Mr. Mori transformed Tokyo’s landscape with mammoth mixed-use development projects such as Roppongi Hills, Ark Hills and Atago Green Hills. Many buildings across the city bear his family name. Roppongi Hills developement in Tokyo is his largest project to date and opened in 2003.
Roppongi Hills Project is a mega-complex & incorporates office space, apartments, shops, restaurants, cafés, movie theaters, a museum, a hotel, a major TV studio, an outdoor amphitheater, and a few parks. The centerpiece is the 54-story Mori Tower
He also worked in other major Asian cities.
The Shanghai World Financial Center(SWFC) is a supertall skyscraper located in the Pudong district of Shanghai, China.
The 101-storey SWFC is the tallest building in China building, was completed in 2008., and second tallest in the World when it was completed. It was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox and developed by Mori Building. It is a mixed-use skyscraper, consisting of offices, hotels, conference rooms, observation decks, and ground-floor shopping malls.
It has the world’s highest observation deck. He acquired the site in 1994, and piling work began three years later just as the Asian financial crisis hit. The land sat idle for six years.
Mori acknowledges the influence of Le Corbusier but believes he has surpassed the Swiss architect's urban designs, particularly in the Roppongi Hills project.
In 2006, Mori's latest development, Omotesando Hills, opened near Harajuku station consisting of a set of ramped shopping floors. It occupies a two hundred and fifty meter stretch of Omotesandō, a famous shopping and (previously) residential road in Aoyama sometimes termed Tokyo's Champs-Élysées. It was designed by Tadao Ando, and contains over 130 shops and 38 apartments.
The construction of Omotesando Hills, built at a cost of $330 million, has been marked by controversy. The building replaced the Bauhaus-inspired Dōjunkai Aoyama Apartments, which had been built in 1927 after the 1923 Kantō earthquake. The destruction of the apartments again raised questions about Japan's interest in preserving historic buildings. A small section of the old apartments is reconstructed in the South-East part of the new complex
In 2008, He was named Asia Businessman of the Year 2007 by Fortune[4] magazine.
In 2009, he was honored as an honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) by Queen Elizabeth II.
Survivors were not disclosed, in accordance with his wishes, the company said.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_World_Financial_Center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roppongi_Hills
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omotesando_Hills |
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