On the refreshing ideas proffered at the 4th edition of the Porto Design Biennale
It does a person good to be reminded of just how design can strengthen communities and shape shared realities. Over to Porto Design Biennale 2025, which explores the power of design as a social catalyst for the present — a force that provides connection through interaction, participation, and collective experience. Let’s be enlightened.
Text: Sandra Hofmeister
House of Echoes in Bonfim, Porto, design by Didier Fiúza Faustino, photo: Porto Design Biennale, Miguel Tavares
From a philosophical standpoint, the present is the only moment of time we truly experience. But even the present is fleeting and ever-changing, constantly transforming into the past while pointing toward the future. It basically consists of a network of events and emotions instead of things. “Kisses, not stones,” in the words of Angela Rui. As principal curator of the fourth Porto Design Biennale, ‘Time is Present. Designing the Common’, she utilises this notion of the present as a concept in itself, positioning design as a power for actions that unfold in the here and now, based on collective infrastructures and interactions.
Rui’s curatorial framework examines how design can enable and shape collective experience. Its focus is the shared fabric of everyday life — encounters defined by language, knowledge, emotion, or trust. Seven participatory projects, referred to as Happisodes, take this idea onto common ground and into the public space. Each project serves as a platform for community engagement. Created by designers, curators, local groups, and municipalities, these are invitations for exchange and connection. Together, these initiatives highlight design’s ability to make the present tangible — to strengthen social ties and reaffirm the role of design as a tool for building community. Time is present, designed as a quality to be shared.
House of Echoes
Four massive granite blocks lift a white shipping container onto the high bank above the Douro river. Inside the small cabin installed in Alameda das Fontaínhas, the walls are covered with acoustic panels. Along the narrow side of the cabin are windows facing the river, while the other side can be opened wide. This transforms the container into a stage for concerts, DJ sets, and discussions. With House of Echoes, architect and artist Didier Fiúza Faustino has created a public space with and for the neighborhood and its guests — it’s there for recording, listening to, and making music, as well as for dancing, concerts and interaction. Like the typical granaries found in northern Portugal, the House of Echoes is architecture without architects. Faustino uses recycled materials for the sound capsule, and the pink wooden chairs in the interior are open source, their design is available to everyone. The packed programme includes neighborhood initiatives and collaborations with music schools, institutes, and associations. In addition, Rádio Intermitente das Fontainhas by Lovers and Lollypops broadcasts interviews, conversations, and many other practices from the sound capsule, all of which question and expand the language of radio.
Exhibition „Time is Present“, Casa do Design, Matosinhos, photo: Porto Design Biennale, Miguel Tavares
In Synchro
Music and empathy as drivers of interaction are also evident at another station of the Biennale, this one in the Campo 24 de Agosto metro station. In Synchro is a sensory device that explores ways of sharing emotions; it connects passers-by with patients at the ALADI facility for the intellectually disabled, in Lavra. Through sounds and corresponding digital images displayed on a screen and generated by simple control-panel buttons that transmit data algorithmically, people can interact in real time and share emotions. The idea of creating a sensory device for collective moments was developed during a workshop with therapists, patients, and students from ESAD Matosinhos and IED Milan, led by designer Ken Billes and Paralympic athlete Tyrone Pillay, alongside designers Alissa van Asseldonk and Nienke Bongers (A+N Studio).
Angela Rui, curator of Porto Design Biennale, photo: Porto Design Biennale, Miguel Tavares
New Diner
The strength of this year’s Biennale lies in its ability to connect a wide variety of different people through design, thereby creating moments, conditions, and places for shared experiences. This is also the intention of the Solidarity Restaurantin Beco Passos Manuel, a residential project in the heart of Porto. French designer Matali Crasset has given the rooms a wonderful and sustainable update, making use of existing materials wherever possible and enriching the identity of the spaces with graphic figures. Lunch and dinner are served for free in the ‘New Diner’ to the most vulnerable members of society. Dinner is free for everyone, no questions asked. This extraordinary form of public conviviality was brought to life through the involvement of several associations, initiatives, and the city administration, providing a place for rest and sharing in Porto.
Read the the full article DAMNMagazine.net
4th Porto Design Biennale TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common 23-11-2025
The official opening program (23. - 26.10.2025) is available - here
Parallaxes: Common Stories, ed. by Gabriela do Amaral, Isabel Carvalho, Andreia Faria, Susana Moreira Marques, Marta Pais Oliveira, Amanda Ribeiro, Susana Ventura; illustrations by Mariana Barrote; graphic design by João Queirós, Diana Amarelo / ISBN 978-989-35953-6-7
