
Everything You Need To Know About Porto Design Biennale ♦ The general theme is Post Millennium Tension and one of its main exhibitions is Millennials – Porto and Matosinhos 1st Design Biennial seems to lend itself to generational conclusions, but it is made of diversity, from Italy, from political posters and from the themes of the new millennium, from Brexit to climate. Porto Design Biennale is born now, voluntarily contaminated by the present and the terms and themes that are currently being debated. Secrets From Portugal brings you all the details on this amazing event that focuses on the main millennial keywords.
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The design has emerged in recent years as a key discipline for thinking about the city and building its future. This international phenomenon is particularly important in Matosinhos and Porto, two cities that have brought design practice into the centre of their cultural strategy, not limiting its potential to the artistic field, but using it continuously as a catalyst for social, economic, technological and environmental change.

The two cities’ various amenities and cultural institutions make up a unique territory that stands out in the country for its artistic diversity and vitality. It is important to emphasize the role of the two City Councils that, from early on, saw design as a fundamental partner in accessing culture, which enhances artistic thought and its languages, making an important contribution to the creation of a new generation of designers in the region.

It is precisely in this context, and because of it, that the Porto Design Biennale was born, a project based on the two cities but not limited to them and whose objectives are to develop an analysis of the current setting of design and to foster dialogue between structures and agents, both in Portugal and abroad, crossing practices and disciplines. The first edition of Porto Design Biennale, therefore, consolidates the presence of this common cultural territory in the international design landscape.

When in May 2017, as part of the European Design Festival, Porto Design Biennale was announced, the decision to design and hold an ambitious international event was made public, giving voice to the design strategy shared by the municipalities of Porto and Matosinhos. As well as aiming to be a regular event to promote design culture, its public discussion and the production of critical knowledge in Portugal, Porto Design Biennale intends to conduct continuous research and disseminate Portuguese and international design, enhancing the crossover of resources between disciplines, designers, companies, academia, industry and various public and private social sectors. Porto and Matosinhos stand out for their consistent and continuous commitment to the appreciation of urban spaces, and their cultural events and improvement of their equipment, and the overall recognition of the value of architecture and design. The relevance of the academy and the importance of the numerous design workshops add the necessary critical mass to these two cities. Porto Design Biennale aims to leverage existing resources, consolidate critical activity and reinforce design scheduling and production.

A comprehensive understanding of a biennial as a producer of research and knowledge is set out in the definition of Porto Design Biennale’s mission and objectives. Each edition of the event will bring up for discussion a theme whose relevance and breadth allow it to raise different questions, stimulate plurality of debate and agree on proposals for realisation and change. The exhibitions are valued as forms of public presentation, as part of a broad range of initiatives in which immaterial production is combined – ideas and their discussion understood as the generating core of knowledge – with publications and the educational service.

The first edition of Porto Design Biennale, open to the public during the extended period from 19 September to 8 December 2019, takes the tensions of the new millennium as its central theme. It takes on board the urgency of considering a changing reality and calling upon the design and understanding it as critical thinking and way of intervening in that reality.

PDB is expected to attract around 100,000 visitors and, although it is an international design event, it is a design milestone on the national calendar. Look inside for the collection of handcrafted posters used in recent protests from the Ephemera archive by José Pacheco Pereira, for example, In What Force Is That (Casa da Arquitectura, from 20 September to 8 December, curated by Helena Sofia Silva), or invites others to look at what is very ours. Portugal Industrial – Links between Design and Industry have curators Megan Dinius (British) and Michel Charlot (Swiss) reflecting on objects from Ach Brito / Claus Porto, Baquelite Liz, Burel, Fastio, Revigrés, Viarco or Vigor, Widow Lamego and Silampos, at Artes Mota-Galicia, from 20th September to 10th November.