This year's theme: Post Millenium Tension

The reflection that gives shape to the Porto Design Biennale 2019 takes into account the historical perspective and tension relationships, between remoteness and closeness, contemporary design, and the model of modern design that was in effect until the end of the millennium; on the other hand, it is important to identify and evaluate the forms and functions of design produced in the first two decades of the current millennium, as well as to reflect on the social efficiency of design and the new connections that arise from the economic, technological, political, cultural and environmental situations.

The millennium shift coincided with a deep, broad, and diversified picture of structural and cyclical changes that have largely redefined the world we live in. Moving in a changing world has become a central challenge to critical thinking, and in this context, the epistemological framework of design has also changed, giving rise to new ideas, models, and processes of intervention (in the material field), exploration (in the relational field) and resistance (in the ideological field). Raised by these critical premises, the core Porto Design Biennale programme will focus on the development of three programmatic axes:

• Present Tense focuses on Portuguese design in the new millennium, aiming at surveying a multiform professional practice.
• Design Forum weaves a critical map of post-millennium tensions and reflects, on the one hand, specificities of disciplinary characterisation and, on the other, working lines of intersection, conflict, confluence or consequence between design, other disciplinary domains and political, financial, technological and cultural aspects. 
• Design and Democracy will focus on the political context of design, and above all on a reflection on possible modes of relationship between Design and Democracy.