Elevators and escalators serve as infrastructure for transporting people in buildings and are essential to the healthy development of cities. This issue of Hitachi Review begins by covering ideas from experts about the future directions to be taken for buildings, cities, and other public spaces, and goes on to cover Hitachi’s new core concept for its elevator and escalator business, its range of products aimed at global markets and the technology development and new services that support them, and the work it is doing on collaborative creation activities with customers and demonstration testing.
In response to the expected rush of large-scale development projects in Kanto area and the increasing demand for the renovation of existing buildings, requirements to create new urban environments and building environments are rising in Japan. In overseas markets as well, interest in adopting building systems capable of accommodating new environments is increasing in emerging countries that are undergoing an acceleration of economic growth and the gravitation of populations to metropolitan areas.
This issue of Hitachi Review covers recent work by Hitachi's building systems business that encompasses building solutions and services as well as elevator and escalator products and services.
Expert Insights and Technotalk both present ideas about the future directions for buildings, cities, and other public spaces.
As a product designer, I have worked on many designs for things that people own. Recently, however, my interests have been shifting toward public spaces used by large numbers of people. The reason for this is that, while public spaces nowadays make allowances for things like barrier-free access and usability, they remain comparatively ignored when it comes to design.
PRODUCTS and services for the elevators and escalators that serve as infrastructure for transporting people in buildings are essential to the steady development of cities. They are continually evolving to be faster, more comfortable, and more able to proactively anticipate unconscious human behavior. This article gives an overview of the global state of the market for building systems and describes Hitachi's range of elevators and escalators and its building system products and services.