How many times you didn't have time?

On the occasion of the 4th edition of the Porto Design Biennale titled TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common curated by Angela Rui with Matilde Losi, designers are invited to submit their proposals as part of the exhibition in Casa do Design in Matosinhos.

How many times you didn’t have time?

Yet time exists and saying we don’t have it implies that time doesn’t belong to us, becoming the only form of luxury many of us can aspire to.

The ancient Greeks distinguished between two forms of time: Chronos — quantitative time, the time of clocks — and Kairos — qualitative time, connected to a sense of occasion. Since then, Chronos has been the main reference to identify time in everyday life, leaving apart Kairos, that qualitative time connected to leisure activities and a sense of occasionality.

In the past, the 8-hour working day was designed to regulate the time to work and the time to leisure and rest, whilst today, despite the loss of that separation, we have not lost the imperative of quantifying time. This specific attitude is what has produced the current conditions of planetary depletion of bodies, resources, and the Earth itself — all unpacked in their utilitarian functions according to the laws of efficiency and turbo-capitalism.

We are immersed in a culture of quantity (Chronos) that acts as a disqualification of quality (Kairos). By objectifying the world through time, its sensible qualities have been set aside, and all the activities that do not produce capital — i.e. everything that concerns care for people, for other species, for the environment, for the world we would like to live in — are perceived as not valuable, creating a feeling of anxiety and non-futurability.

TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common invites for a shift in our daily perspective.

What would happen if we would also start observing the potential of qualitative time? Maybe the present would not be seen as a crisis to overcome but rather as a dimension filled with collective possibilities waiting to be activated. This perspective fully inhabits the now and suggests the importance of reclaiming time as a common resource — a gift that belongs to all, a condition for belonging, a present of presence.

This vision frames design as collective world-building, intended as an active, ongoing, down-to-earth engagement with the materiality of the present, where the collective capacity to shape systemic relations becomes both medium and subject, taking the design discipline beyond the idea of a future-oriented or problem-solving practice. Here, “the common” expands from shared resources to embrace a fundamental dimension of social production that includes material elements alongside language, knowledge, affects, relationships, and of course, trust.

Therefore, assuming time as a shared resource and design as a political practice, the biennale becomes a platform that moves from functioning as an institution to operating instead as a constitution — a living process that actively produces new and lasting social relations, forms of organization, and modes of collaboration.

With these intentions, the exhibition TIME IS PRESENT. Designing the Common presents itself as a testing-playground for transdisciplinary projects and practices of spatial justice capable of designing objects, places, activities, and processes able to vitalise collective and associative realities, guaranteeing them long-term agency thanks to the belief that design is oriented towards the shared well-being of living beings and their environment, and vice versa.

Casa do Design in Matosinhos will provide space for this prevailing design attitude that needs to be represented, taking shape as a collection of national and international projects that intervene on a systemic level on the current socio-economic dynamics of the context and the community they cooperate with, experimenting with a radical rethinking of our relationship with time and collective space through design on different scales and politics:

→ rest and leisure
→ generational and intergenerational forms of gathering
→ pleasure and fun
→ shared well-being
→ knowledge exchange

Projects and practices emphasizing design as an inherently social and political practice rather than an individual pursuit, offering tangible manifestations of how design can create new temporal and spatial qualities in our daily experiences, are welcome.

Promoted By
Câmara Municipal do Porto
Câmara Municipal de Matosinhos

Organised By
esad—idea + esad matosinhos

With the high patronage of
His Excellency The President of the Republic

For further informations visit porto design biennale’s official page