Porto Design Biennale: the place for viewing, circulating and discussing contemporary art

"Optimism", "showcasing what we have best" and "to look for the collective benefit": these were the three key ideas highlighted by Rui Moreira, Mayor of Porto and President of the PDB Board on occasion of the closing ceremony of Porto Design Biennale, on 8th December, at Leixões Cruise terminal, whose first edition was visited by circa 50 thousand people.

The first edition of Porto Design Biennale (PDB) 2019 theme was "Post Millennium Tension", and it was jointly organised by the municipalities of Porto and Matosinhos, which have allocated a robust municipal investment in culture.

"We are talking about an event that has an overall budget of 1 600 000 euros (one million four hundred thousand), and the public fund related to that investment is 860 thousand euros from Porto City Hall and 540 thousand euros from Matosinhos City Hall", Rui Moreira, Mayor of Porto, explained at the time of PDB opening.

These two neighbouring municipalities have a common strategy regarding these areas, culture being common ground when it comes to investment efforts; this relevant project also reflects the widespread consensus on the subject among the political forces in the city of Porto, because "we all recognise the importance of design", Mayor Rui Moreira enhanced.

The event took place in several venues in Porto and Matosinhos from 19 September to 8 December 2019 and advanced a programme to rethinking design in the new millennium, focusing on contemporaneity and urban environment. The starting point was the inauguration of the exhibition "Millennials - Design do Novo Milénio", at Porto Municipal Gallery and Italy was the first invited country.

Porto Design Biennale 2019 first edition curator, José Bártolo explained that the aim was to seek and to trace the projects and work processes by the Millennials, aka Generation Y or the Net Generation, usually named this way to refer to individuals who reached adulthood around the turn of the 21st century, in a framework of accelerated tensions at global level, be it identity wise, geopolitical, financial, environmental and technological.

The PDB was jointly promoted by Porto City Hall and Matosinhos City Hall, and it was organised by the esad-idea - Research in Design and Art.

This is the first time that the country organises a Biennale with the purpose of promoting the internationalisation of design creative thinking.