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Saio Lab
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A lab that goes out into communities, from elementary schools to farming, mountain, and fishing villages, to study and plan for them.
AboutAbout the lab
Fieldwork research grounded in architecture and urban planning.
The Saio Lab works on architectural planning, community facility planning, and urban and rural planning.
Its themes include elementary schools and local communities, university campuses and urban regeneration, and urban areas and farming, mountain, and fishing village areas.
The lab follows how these pairs push against each other, or cooperate and collaborate to create synergy.
Rather than thinking only at a desk, the lab carries out its research based on fieldwork at the sites themselves.
Key terms
- Architectural planning
- A field that considers the rooms, sizes, and layout a building needs, based on the behavior of the people who use it
- Community facility planning
- Considering the placement and role of facilities that local people use jointly, such as schools and libraries
- Fieldwork
- A research method in which researchers go to the site and collect data by observing, measuring, and conducting interviews
ResearchResearch themes
The lab's research areas are architectural planning, community facility planning, and urban and rural planning. Its themes include elementary schools and local communities, university campuses and urban regeneration, and urban areas and farming, mountain, and fishing village areas. Based on fieldwork, it investigates the tension between them and the synergy created through cooperation and collaboration.
*Illustrative imageDesigning schools that serve as evacuation shelters
In a disaster, public elementary and junior high schools become evacuation shelters for the community. The lab compares schools built after an earthquake with schools in older buildings, and explores the spatial conditions that make a school easy to use as a shelter.
*Illustrative imageMaking schools community hubs
So that schools can remain hubs of community life, the lab visits sites to study how small schools are run, how children spend their time in school buildings, and how the sites of closed schools are reused.
*Illustrative imageLife in mountain settlements
To explore how cities and farming and mountain villages can both continue to thrive, the lab visits mountain settlements and records, through oral-history interviews with residents, how their way of life has changed over time.
MembersFaculty
The Saio Lab's members consist of faculty, research fellows, and doctoral, master's, and undergraduate students.As of 2026
- ProfessorNaoko SaioPublications ↗
VoicesStudent voices
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Report an errorAbout the images
The top and research theme images are illustrative and were not taken at the lab. They are cropped from Wikimedia Commons images. Cropped CC BY-SA images are provided under the same CC BY-SA license as the original (version shown on each line).
- Top image: “Oshu City Maesawa Elementary School Building 202508b” とらもん192 / CC BY 4.0 (cropped)
- Designing schools that serve as evacuation shelters: “US Navy 071024-N-0066L-001 Lt. Jane Scribner, a medical officer attached to amphibious transport dock USS Cleveland (LPD 7), assists a patient at an evacuation center located in the San Diego High School gymnasium” U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class George Labidou / Public domain (cropped)
- Making schools community hubs: “Yaotsu Town Shionami Junior high school (closed)” Alpsdake / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Life in mountain settlements: “Kiiji, Haratani village 02” Indiana jo / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (菅原研究室): “Tenji-block” Haragayato / CC BY-SA 2.5 (cropped)
- Related lab (大佛研究室): “Alphabet City aerial view” Felton Davis / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (沖拓弥研究室): “JP-Tokyo-Area-Taken-From-Airplane” Kanchi1979 / CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)
- Related lab (村田涼研究室): “Another daoist temple ( )” Francisco Anzola / CC BY 2.0 (cropped)
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