School of Environment and Society Institute of SCIENCE TOKYO, JAPAN
Center for Educational Facilities and Learning Environments
Our center “ST-CEL” comprises four areas of academic research and related activities:
(1)Building design and planning
(2)Environmental design and planning
(3)Information gathering and international exchange
(4)Community service
Academic Staff
Naoko SAIO Director, and Professor (Dr. Eng.)
Toshihiro OSARAGI Professor (Dr. Eng.)
Visiting Professor
Takashi KASAHARA Professor,FormerJapanMinistryofEducation, Culture,Sports,ScienceandTechnology(M.Eng.)
MasaoK OIZUMI Professor,TokyoMetropolitanUniversity (Dr. Eng.)
Kiwako KAMO Professor,NagoyaInstituteofTechnology (M. Eng.)
Kazuhisa TSUNEKAWA Professor,NagoyaUniversity (Dr. Eng.)
Keita MIZUSAWA AssociateProfessor,JapanMinistryofEducation,Culture,Sports,ScienceandTechnology(M. Eng.)
Educational facilities play an all important role in education. A school’s buildings influence learning activities and behavior, as well as teaching methods. Quality of school buildings will almost certainly affect educational levels in a given community– and in the long term throughout an entire country. Education and its physical facilities contribute jointly to social welfare and economic development. Our research embraces two major kinds of physical learning environments. We concentrate overall on such facilities as school buildings, university campuses and buildings, and research laboratories. We also research such specialized facilities as libraries, community centers, lifelong learning venues,museums, theaters, sports facilities, afterschool care facilities, and even children’s playhouses.
In the immediate term, our mission is to make available through our research the significant data that leads to best planning and design practices for administrators, teachers, planners, and architects, as well as national and local governments. We also look to study the individual planning and design of educational facilities in practice, in order to demonstrate the ways in which our accrued research data can and does impact actual planning and design processes. In the extended term, we seek to contribute to the development of all educational and related facilities, thus raising the general level of education and enriching society and improving its welfare through our academic activities.
In Japan during the early 1960s several academics at the Architectural Institute of Japan pioneered research into the effective planning and uses of educational facilities. The field has been broadly developed since then in undergraduate departments and graduate schools of architecture in a number of Japanese universities. Tokyo Tech has been active in this domain for over fifty years. Such research affords an overall scientific basis for the field whilst also supporting policymaking in practice. In this context, the Research Center for Educational Facilities (RCEF) at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) was established in 1983 with the direct support of Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. We presently hold former Ministry of Education official Makoto Kanno’s extensive document collection on government policymaking for school buildings from the Meiji era to the period of Japan’s recovery following World War II, the only archive featuring such historical materials located anywhere in Japan. Our center remains likewise the only formally constituted academic organ in the field of educational facilities research in this country. For over four decades, we have sought out new research objectives to meet and fulfill social, economic, and educational needs within the field. From 1994, our center joined the OECD’s PEB (Program on Educational Buildings) as the Japan government’s representative for international exchange and cooperation in this domain. Similarly, we were also a participating member of the OECD’s GNEELE (Group of National Experts on Effective Learning Environments).