Lllabo

• Speakers: Krijn Christiaansen & Cathelijne Montens
• When: Thursday, 16 December 2010, 6:30-8:30pm
• Where: Meeting Room 3, 2F, Building 55S, Nishi-waseda Campus, Waseda University, Tokyo   (Map)
• Language: English
• Registration: Please register your attendance using the form below
• Poster: (Download here!).

Public space constitutes both the receptacle of common experience and a realm for encountering difference. Its spaces are both banal and delightful; both everyday and filled with contingency. Such spaces form the primary field of action for Krijn Christiaansen and Cathelijne Montens, two young Dutch designers whose developing practice explores the ways public spaces and landscapes are made by, used by, lived in, transformed and shaped by people. Their attention is directed not only to the physical forms of the built environment, but also encompasses the stories, myths, habits and gestures that suffuse it.

Christiaansen and Montens’ research and design interventions have taken them beyond their native Netherlands to Serbia, Romania, Indonesia, and, most recently, to Japan. They are presently conducting fieldwork research on the urban landscape of Tokyo, drawing on urban observations and interviews with inhabitants and users to tease out themes and situations distinctive to Tokyo’s urbanism.

LLLABO is pleased to invite Christiaansen and Montens to present and discuss their ongoing research on Tokyo. In addition to sharing their explorations and discoveries about Tokyo’s public spaces, we hope to foster a broader discussion about landscape as a conceptual resource in shaping urban spaces of encounter and interaction.

All welcome – advance registration requested.

Krijn Christiaansen & Cathelijne Montens

Krijn Christiaansen (1978) and Cathelijne Montens (1978) graduated from the Design Academy in Eindhoven (NL). They founded a studio that specialises in research and design proposals for the public space and landscape. Field research plays an important role in the studio’s design process. Stories, oral history, informal usage of space and the connection between people and the man-made environment form the starting points for projects. Clients include Droog Design, the Province of Utrecht, Gelderland and Noord-Holland, the City of Amsterdam and the Port of Rotterdam. Work has been exhibited in various galleries and museums, such as Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam), Stroom (Den Haag), Centraal Museum (Utrecht), Erasmushuis (Jakarta) and the Institut Néerlandais (Paris).