WHO AM I?

Chris Landau, Principal and Founder of LANDAU Design+Technology

When I was in middle school, I begged my mom to buy me a graphing calculator. She wasn't sure what I would do with it, but she knew that I would use it. And I did. I was obsessed. I trained myself to be able to look at the screen, even on road trips (You would be impressed if you ever rode with my dad). I built a bunch of programs. One drew a randomly wandering line, others drew 3D equations. But within a few years I wrote a program to draw a rotating hypercube. I was obsessed with seeing higher dimensions.

While I am not as interested in higher dimensions as I was back then, I think this story says a lot about me. One, I like to figure things out, especially technology. I like technology. Two, I also want to be able to visualize the results. And three, I want to be working on things that are special, that transcend our everyday reality. I can't help myself.

I have also grown a lot since then. I'm a citizen, a teacher, a husband, an entrepreneur and a father. I have a new appetite for working on projects that make our world a better place to live. I think it's possible to do that through good design, even edgy design. I've also had all sorts of new obsessions; biology, agents, design, workflows, human cognition, drawing, sculpture, painting, printmaking, animation, programming, mobile technology, spatial computing, and landscape architecture, to name a few.

Today, I primarily work in design, education, and technology. My roots are in the arts; drawing, painting, printmaking, and sculpture. But my branches are running and growing my digital design firm, LANDAU, started in 2018. We have worked on some great stuff so far, but my primary acheivement is Land Kit, a computational toolset for designing the landscape.

Before that I was ‘Visualizer’ and ‘Digital Design Manager’ at OLIN, an internationally recognized landscape architecture firm. At OLIN I worked on design solutions for projects all around the world. From 3D modeling, rendering, and furnishing design to parametric design, python development, training, and asset management, I worked to push OLIN and now many other firms into the 21st Century.

Moving forward, I hope to continue to evolve and to be obsessed with my work.