Lithuanian Design Week ’23 will invite you to search for design solutions for you and your home in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Alytus, Telšiai and Anyksciai from 5 to 11 June. One of the forms of the festival – dizainovacija.lt – will delight the residents and visitors of Vilnius and Kaunas with an abundance of designer showcases. Today we are introducing designer, member of the Lithuanian Design Forum and annual Design Week participant Julia Janulaitytė, better known as Julia Janus.

Julia Janulaitytė, an interdisciplinary artist, fashion, furniture, and place settings designer, started her career as a fashion designer in 1998. Once her career took off, Julia worked most intensively from 2008-2018, creating one of the most successful and exciting Lithuanian fashion brands Julia Janus. During that time, the designer started to develop an interest in place-based creative activities, place-based design – place design, and in 2019 she finally turned her attention in this direction.

Julia, tell us what is place design and what artistic value does it create?

Place design develops solutions to transform a space into a place, to initiate, together with the local community, a social, cultural and economic change of a place.

My most famous projects are in Vilnius – the Glass Quarter, Užupis Jonas Mekas Skersvejis. And in Kaunas, on V. Kuzma St., among the buildings of the Kaunas Faculty of Vilnius Academy of Arts, you can find the open street art gallery Arterija.

Why did you get so involved in this area of design?

I am fascinated by the transformation of geographic location, the application of different creative design solutions to the creation of place-based