The Porto Design Biennale TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common

talk
WE WILL DESIGN

The fourth edition of the Porto Design Biennale, titled TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common, begins with a simple yet profound question: "How many times have you felt like you didn’t have time?"

The ancient Greeks distinguished between two forms of time: Chronos — quantitative time, the time measured by clocks — and Kairos — qualitative time, linked to a sense of opportunity.
Since then, Chronos has become the dominant reference for structuring daily life, pushing Kairos aside—the time of leisure, spontaneity, and meaningful moments. This mindset has contributed to today’s planetary exhaustion: bodies, resources, and the Earth itself have been fragmented into their utilitarian functions, dictated by the laws of efficiency and turbo-capitalism—time included.
The culture of quantity has impoverished the quality of time, objectifying, fragmenting, and commodifying it to the point of generating a widespread sense of anxiety and a diminished sense of the future.

TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common invites us to shift our perspective.
What if we started considering the qualitative potential of time? Perhaps the present would no longer be seen as a crisis to overcome but as a space full of collective possibilities waiting to be activated.

By recognizing time as a shared resource and design as a political practice of collective world-building, the Biennale transforms from an institution into a constitution, actively fostering new and lasting social relationships, organizational forms, and modes of collaboration.

With this vision, TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common serves as a testing ground for transdisciplinary projects and practices that design objects, spaces, activities, and processes capable of revitalizing collective and associative realities. It seeks to provide them with the necessary conditions to generate long-term interventions, grounded in the belief that design is intrinsically linked to the shared well-being of living beings and their environment—and vice versa.

Bio

Angela Rui

Angela Rui is a design curator and researcher based in Milan. She obtained her PhD in Exhibition Design from the Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Architecture. The former designer was an editor for years, now contributing – through mentoring, curating and writing – to the revision of the role of design as a critical practice that supports and protects eco-social renewal through experimental methodologies of systemic, relational and regenerative design.
Participating in a wide variety of projects, she has also curated exhibitions: ITALY: A New Collective Landscape (ADI Design Museum, Milan 2023; HKDG, Hong Kong 2024, Italian Pavilion Expo2010, Shanghai 2024); AQUARIA. Ou a Ilusão de um Mar Encaixado at MAAT (Lisbon, 2021); co-curator of I See That I See What You Don’t See, the Dutch Pavilion for Broken Nature – XXII Triennale di Milano (2019), and Faraway So Close – the 25th Ljubljana Design Biennale (2017).
He has taught on the master’s programme in Social Design and GEO-Design – Design Academy Eindhoven (NL, 2016-2023), in Critica del Contemporaneo at the Università di Design di San Marino and also at various Italian institutions, such as MAXXI (Rome), Milan Triennale, ENSAD (Paris), USI Academy of Architecture (Mendrisio), Re- Earth – Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), Mudec (Milan), IUAV (Venice), Domus Academy (Milan).
Angela Rui is currently Director of the Master of Arts programme at IED Milano. Her texts have been published in magazines such as Abitare, Domus, Icon Design, Pinup, Riposte, Vogue, TLmag, Terraforma Journal, Flashart Italia, Lotus.

Magda Seifert

Executive Director of the Porto Design Biennale, Manager, and Consultant, holding an MBA from Porto Business School — University of Porto (2024).
Since 2020, she has been part of the Board of esad-idea, Research in Design and Art, where she is responsible for the Special Projects department. In this role, she has served as Executive Director of the Porto Design Biennale (2021 and 2023) and was part of the organizing team for the annual conference of the Design History Society, Displaying Design: History, Criticism, and Curatorial Discourses, among other projects. She is also experienced in preparing and submitting applications for various European and national funding programs, particularly for initiatives such as the New European Bauhaus, aligning proposals with the Sustainable Development Goals, the 2030 Agenda, inclusion, and innovation.
Founder and director of Circo de Ideias, a cultural association where she has coordinated multiple editions, conferences, and exhibition projects since 2008. In 2023, she was the curator of Open House Porto, invited by Casa da Arquitectura. Between 2014 and 2016, she collaborated with the Canadian Centre for Architecture in transferring Álvaro Siza’s archive to the institution. From 2015 to 2017, along with Luís Tavares Pereira and Bruno Baldaia, she curated the 5th edition of Habitar Portugal. From 2010 to 2014, she was part of the team at the Northern Regional Section of the Portuguese Architects’ Association, serving as an advisor to the Presidency.
She holds a degree in Architecture from the Escola Universitária das Artes de Coimbra (2006).

Andreia Faria

Born in Porto in 1984. Published Flúor (Textura Edições, 2013), Um pouco acima do lugar onde melhor se escuta o coração (Edições Artefacto, 2015), and Tão bela como qualquer rapaz (Língua Morta, 2017, SPA Poetry Prize 2018). In 2019, released Alegria para o fim do mundo (Porto Editora, Inês de Castro Foundation Prize), a volume anthologizing all the previous books. In 2020, published the collection of prose Clavicórdio (Língua Morta), and in 2022, Canina (Tinta-da-china). In 2025 she was awarded the Prémio Literário Casino da Póvoa, granted as part of the Correntes d’Escritas festival.

Matilde Losi, designer, editor and curator, MA in Design Curating & Writing at the Design Academy Eindhoven. She writes for Elledecor.it and Zero.eu and works on independent projects ranging from writing to curating, organising public programmes and producing national and international exhibitions. She co-curated the exhibition “ITALY: A New Collective Landscape” (ADI Design Museum, Milano 2023; HKDI Gallery, Hong Kong 2024; Italian Pavilion Expo2010, Shanghai 2024) together with Angela Rui and Elisabetta Donati De Conti, and “Moving in Stasis” graduation show of Design Academy Eindhoven (Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam 2020). She worked as editor for Fictional Journal and Baltan Laboratories on the two editions of Baltan Academy “Make Economy Yours Again”. She produced the 2021 edition of Alcova design fair in Milan and “DAE 75: INTERGENERATIONAL GRADUATION SHOW” exhibition for Design Academy Eindhoven during Milan Design Week 2022.

The Porto Design Biennale, initiated in 2019, is an event to foster debate and welcome concerns and multiple perspectives on design, championing new discourses and practices that enhance design’s prospective ability to outline innovative solutions for collective problems.

Design is a discipline, that also operates as a revealing action verb. In this sense, Design has been asserting itself as an area of great importance for societies, playing a fundamental role in creating new social, political, cultural, and environmental paradigms.

This major event, promoted in collaboration between two municipalities (Porto and Matosinhos) and organized by esad—idea, seeks to create a platform for dialogue between civil society, academia, industry, national and international cultural institutions, and agents. With a commitment to the territory and local identities, valuing craftsmanship and materiality, Porto Design Biennale conveys broad-spectrum thinking and involvement, starting from the surrounding context and dynamics to generate speculation and debate on global issues.

So... is this getting serious?

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