Open call for projects

Porto Design Biennale is an event that has been fostering debate, welcoming considerations and multiple perspectives, while stimulating interest in Design, promoting new discourses and practices that increase the prospective capacity of the subject to outline innovative solutions to collective problems. Under this year’s theme, “Being Water: How we flow and shape each other”, Porto Design Biennale invites designers and cultural agents to submit projects within the scope of the parallel programme.

This edition proposes a transdisciplinary laboratory platform dedicated to observation, reflection, creativity, and learning, which will act simultaneously in the visible and invisible, organic and inorganic, and ephemeral spectra of water. Participants in the open call for projects are invited to think about these topics, according to six dimensions: 

Promethean Beasts: Shapes of the human / Magic Reality: Living with the un/known / Bodies of Water: Where water becomes common—vegetable matter, meat, mineral / Dynamic Landscapes: Dancing margins, borders that don’t exist / Flying Rivers: Rethinking the sources, uses, and representations of water / Affective Geologies: The living history of a recipe. 

More than categorizing, the goal is to encourage participants to explore different forms of action that can be expressed in a variety of formats, including debates/colloquiums, workshops/trainings, exhibitions/installations, publications/editions, interventions/events, and collaborations/coproductions. 

In order to integrate the biennale’s parallel programme, we value projects that propose critical interpretations of the general theme of this edition, that can rethink the traditional formats of public presentation, and that broadens the range of audiences reached and the ways of interacting with them. For this purpose, monetary support will be granted to the ten projects selected by the Jury, according to their nature, relevance, and dimension, which may cover their full or partial implementation. The amount, totaling 60,000 (sixty thousand Euros), is allocated according to the detailed budget of each project, in support circumscribed to crates of support limited to the following levels: 9,000 euros (nine thousand euros), 6,000 euros (six thousand euros) and 3,000 euros (three thousand euros).

Submission guidelines

Applicants must submit a single PDF file with a maximum of ten pages (max. file size: 100MB) including:
–Project name
–Dates and Location
–Project objective and its relation with the Porto Design Biennale 2023 theme
–Detailed budget and respective Execution Schedule
–Complete identification of the candidates and curricular notes of the team
–Declaration under oath that they are not covered by any of the clauses mentioned in number 04.4 of the Regulation at the moment of the application submission. 

Submissions close June 26, 2023 at 11:59pm, EST. Submit here. Regulation here.

Organization / contacts
This open call is launched by Porto Design Biennale, organized by esad—idea, Research in Design and Art, and promoted by the municipalities of Porto and Matosinhos. All documentation is available both in Portuguese and English on the website of Porto Design Biennale, the official site for consulting the procedure.

Porto Design Biennale Headquarters
esad—idea, Research in Design and Art
Rua Brito Capelo, 243
4450-073 Matosinhos
E: portodesignbiennale [​at​] esad.pt