The second edition of Porto Design Biennale, promoted by the municipalities of Porto and Matosinhos and organised by the research centre of Escola Superior de Arte e Design (ESAD), will take place in June and July next year. “Alter-realities: Designing the Present” is the chosen theme and France is the invited country.


Dates are marked on the calendar. Between 4 June and 25 July 2021, the cities of Porto and Matosinhos return as the European epicentre of a reflection on design, in all its dimensions.


Porto Design Biennale (PDB), in its first edition, on September 2019, chose Italy as a guest country, this time around it turns to France, a country equally fertile in the development of the discipline.


Inevitably, the sudden change that 2020 brought to the world, also ended up dictating the theme of the event, which will focus its programme and energies “on the debate around the design’s capacity to outline new solutions for collective problems, at a time when the world faces new challenges and uncertainties regarding the use, planning and sustainability of urban centres, the mobility of citizens and the way in which the public space can remain a catalyst for experiences”, points out the organiser, in a statement.


In the second edition of the PDB, the curator will be Alastair Fuad-Luke, considered “an expert in the research of how design is applied to social, ecological, political and educational issues”. The Professor of Design Research at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy), and also an activist, is also the author and co-author of several books, among which stand out “The Eco-design Handbook” or “Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World”.


In addition to the usual programming, which includes exhibitions, conferences, workshops and books, Alastair Fuad-Luke's curatorship is committed to responding “to the challenges of a programming during the current context and spread across the territory of both cities”.


Even more understandable, given his professional career and the network work he promotes. He currently is a consultant to the European Union under the project “4Cs, From Conflict to Conviviality through Creativity and Culture”, having also collaborated on other European projects such as “Eco-innovera - Support Systems for Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Transformation” and “Leonardo Da Vinci - Design Education and Sustainability”. On the other hand, one of his most recent projects, muu-baa, presents itself as a networked organisation for “agricultural” explorations.


In 2019, the first edition of PDB mobilised around 50 thousand people over 81 days, in a programme that featured around 300 projects and 60 events such as exhibitions, workshops, performances, installations and talks, presented in 37 venues in the cities of Porto and Matosinhos, involving 20 curators and 310 participants from 18 nationalities.

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    Last updated 2022-12-06