This project consists of a series of four design research residencies in the context of the Porto Design Biennale, investigating the idea of systems in design from multiple perspectives. They offered the workshop participants and the public an introduction to systems thinking in design, challenging a one-dimensional view of design, stripped of its inherent relations, tensions, problems, consequences. Brazilian design researchers Luiza Prado and Pedro Oliveira (A Parede) held a workshop with the goal of unpacking the networks that inform the existence of an object in the world, as well as its implications in-use. This workshop was followed by a study of Portuguese news media by Thai researcher Belle Phromchanya (ACED), making use of the archives of the Municipal Library of Porto. It used cross-fields research methodologies to discover unseen patterns and collect evidence that could be constructed into a coherent narrative. Dutch designer Ruben Pater’s workshop mapped, deconstructed, and visualised the means of production of contemporary graphic design in the context of the cities of Porto and Matosinhos, and the way economic value is created and sustained. Finally, the collective Demystification Committee traveled to Porto to conduct field-research in the context of their project and film Interface Chaos (2019), mapping and connecting the behaviour of money through tax havens in Porto and its infrastructure. By covering a wide range of areas of interest with diverse approaches, Design Systems proposes an exposure to the ways in which design can analyse, deconstruct, reveal and challenge the systems in which we live and how these, in turn, design us back.


