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Exhibitions & Events>Mobile Engawa

Mobile Engawa / Chaal.Chaal.Agency

Mobile Engawa

September 19 (Fri) - November 24 (Mon, substitute holiday), 2025

Mobile Engawa is a small, mobile public space in Chiba City that aims to spur the imagination and dialogue. Made up of assembled parts, the device is both a work of art for viewers to enjoy and a tool for participants to touch and move.

The name comes from a Japanese word for a type of veranda, an intermediate space in traditional Japanese homes serving to connect the indoor and outdoor realms. Mobile Engawa aspires be an informal place where anyone can drop by, have a conversation, and relax.

The project unfolds over the course of six phases: research, design, production, installation, operation, and updates. It presents an interpretation of public space that redefines it not as a mere transit point or functional location, but as a place of co-creation built up by people through interaction. In this way, the project constitutes an attempt to bridge art and urban planning. Instead of aiming for grand spectacle, it is a means of gently conveying to residents’ senses the everyday textures and small discomforts found in the city, as well as suggestions for the future.

During the main exhibition period of the festival, Mobile Engawa is installed in a frequently overlooked spot near Chiba Station. On the cubes, people can write their thoughts and complaints about the city, as well as their wishes for how things should be, and move the cubes around to create the space together.

Mobile Engawa occasionally relocates to other sites in the city. Please be aware that it may not be at the main exhibition venue.

Event Overview

Other Events

Workshops will be held in the Chiba Station area. Details to be announced.

Directions to the Venue (Arts Unagi ~ Venue)

This is a walking video from Arts Unagi (the venue for Iwasawa Brothers’ “Chimera Toy Shop / Arts Unagi”). It takes about 3 to 5 minutes on foot.

Venue: Tsukuru Niwa Exterior

Heatstroke Prevention Measures

Please take measures to prevent heatstroke by staying hydrated and wearing a hat, etc., according to the environment. If you feel unwell, please notify a nearby staff member.

Photography and Video Recording

Photography and video recording will be conducted on the day for promotional and record-keeping purposes. Media outlets may also conduct interviews and filming. Photographs and videos taken may be published on the Chiba International Art Festival website, social media, brochures, and other promotional materials, as well as on television, magazines, and other media. We kindly ask for your understanding in advance.

Base of this exhibitions & events

Tsukuruniwa Ichibacho/Inohana area

Other exhibitions & events of "Mobile Engawa"

Mobile Engawa

Others
Mobile Engawa is a participatory urban intervention designed to activate spatial imagination and civic dialogue in the everyday landscape of Chiba. Conceived as a movable public platform, it consists of a modular structure and a series of transformable cubes that function as both expressive devices and participatory tools. Installed in overlooked or transitional spaces around Chiba Station, the project invites citizens to articulate their visions, frustrations, and desires for the city by inscribing, assembling, or altering these cubes—transforming them into micro-architectures of collective thought. Drawing on the Japanese concept of engawa—a threshold space between interior and exterior—the installation fosters informal encounters, civic play, and shared authorship. Developed in six phases, from research and design to post-installation reactivation, Mobile Engawa reframes public space as a site of co-creation. It bridges art and urbanism, not as spectacle, but as a method to re-sensitize citizens to the lived textures, frictions, and futures embedded in their built environment.
More details

Chaal.Chaal.Agency

Sebastián Trujillo-Torres is a designer, researcher, and lecturer with extensive professional experience in Colombia and India. His field of practice ranges from the engineering of design methodologies and constructive processes, to the elaboration of adaptive objects and spatialities. He co-founded Chaal.Chaal.Agency, a design-research collaborative project that investigates issues and potentialities particular to Global South urbanisms as templates for global imaginations, with the aim of triggering larger transformations through small-scale interventions. Kruti Shah is an architect, researcher, and academician based in Mumbai, India, and founding partner of Chaal.Chaal.Agency. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, and later pursued her postgraduate studies at CEPT University, where she earned a Master’s degree in Architectural Design and was awarded the Erasmus+ fellowship. She has been invited to speak at many institutions worldwide, including Carnegie Mellon University, the Politecnico di Milan, Bauhaus Universität in Weimar, Virserum Konsthall (Sweden), School of Environment and Architecture (Mumbai), and FOAID (Delhi). She has been a co-recipient of the DXD–Sanskriti Fellowship 2022 and was selected as an artist for the ‘Beyond the Blueprint’ initiative by KHOJ International Artists’ Association. Most recently, she was selected among 80 women architects to showcase her work as part of the ‘Samatva: Shaping the Built’ Pavilion at the India Art, Architecture and Design Biennale 2024 in Delhi.
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Kazuhiko Hiwa

Chiba city walkingpractice™ code_bridge [spec_chiba]

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venue: Around Chiba station
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tetogu

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Assisting with filming
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