Into the Sky
By most any company’s standards, erecting the world’s tallest tower—the TOKYO SKYTREE®, at a height of 2,080 feet—would be an insurmountable architectural feat. But for the Obayashi Corporation, it was merely a warm-up. In 2012 the global construction, civil engineering, and real estate development conglomerate announced that it had begun research so that it could assemble a 96,000-kilometer (59,652-mile) carbon nanotube cable that will extend from Earth into the cosmos to support a space elevator. Akihisa “Aki” Miwa (M.S. OR ’83), general manager of Obayashi’s Technical Division, says that the company, where he has been employed since 1974, has always had one eye just beyond the horizon.