At a total floor space of 672,000 square meters, the Harumi Ichome District Urban Redevelopment Project ("Harumi Triton Square") was a major undertaking, with Sumitomo Corporation as one of the development partners. The project started construction in 1993, aiming to completing in April 2001.
Mr. Hiroki Inoue of Sumitomo's Building & Overseas Real Estate Business Dept. was searching to answer one question as he took the lead of the new project. "As a general trading firm, what should Sumitomo Corporation strive to accomplish with the first Big Project to be completed in the 21st century?"
Through a tangle of thoughts, one target became apparent: "To create a new, leading-edge business utilizing the Integrated Strength of the Sumitomo Corporation Group." And the cleaning robot was one idea that came to the fore.
The birth of four enormous office buildings. With a daunting number of floors needed to be cleaned daily, any system based on manual labor would have to manage hundreds of workers. It would definitely be a difficult task to bring together that many individuals to clean the office buildings.
It was about this time that Mr. Inoue first saw cleaning robots in use at Haneda Airport. His thoughts began to swirl at a rapid pace. Back at the department, Yukinari Shiraishi and the others received the word from Inoue, "Start looking for a partner!"
It was opened as a "Ｎew Town" composed of green outdoor space(a garden of plantings), office complex, commercial facilities, housing, etc with its concept of "integration of offices, entertainment and housing" in January 2001.
Its representation is the office complex, where the robot cleaning crew (featured in this issue of Project Eye) work away. As a leading-edge building, a waste measurement system, a District Heating & Cooling System (DHC), and a water recycling system have been operationalized. It has been rated as S (Excellent) for efforts on mitigating heat island effects of CASBEE (Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Environmental Efficiency), a national rating system that assesses the environmental performance of sustainability-promoting buildings. In addition, the building has been designed to control a disaster level (anti-earthquake measures), and a high-speed mechanical parking system (human-resource effective parking space) has been implemented. The Harumi Triton Square has become an intelligent office complex for the new age.
