The programme is based on the need to explore transversal methodologies and to develop instruments that contribute to broadening the interpretation of design agendas in a period of political transition such as that which took place in the Iberian Peninsula from the 1970s onwards, with special attention to those phenomena marginalised in the narratives of consensus, such as materiality (which conditions the categories of high and low culture, professional and popular, as well as concepts and policies on heritage), colonial effects, gender politics, or the processes that take place between design and other creative disciplines, and between design and modes of production.
The effect of these new interpretative frameworks is to rethink the function and value of design in complex social processes, as well as to explore the character and condition of objects that deserve to be part of heritage memory and the historical narrative it produces.
Objectives
- To consolidate the narrative of the visual cultures of both countries and the specificities of the Iberian Peninsula in their histories and heritage.
- To understand the relationship between politics, graphic design and visual culture in the context of the emergence of democracy in this region of southern Europe.
- To explore marginalised histories, perspectives and visual cultural heritage in Portugal and Spain at the end of the 20th century.
- To engage a broad young audience with the foundations of contemporary democratic culture and address the importance of awareness-raising in the use of design to update them in the 21st century, when these foundations may be at risk.
- To recognise diversity and the emergence of countercultures, as well as discourses and practices of individual freedom, as foundations of contemporary Europe.
- To promote scientific research as well as academic exchange between Portugal and Spain, inviting partner institutions for further exposure and dissemination in both countries and in Europe.
- To preserve the history, identity and specificity of Portuguese and Spanish design (with its internal plurinational specificities), as well as to optimise and pool resources, consolidating Iberian and international audiences.
The research formats and outputs are diverse and are characterised by generating multimodal perspectives and open and collaborative instruments at the service of researchers, students and museum curators: Workshops, seminars, conferences, exhibitions, documentaries, publications, websites, toolkits and pedagogical materials.
Activities carried out to date
The first public activity was a specific Call for Papers in 2023 in the journal Inmaterial, which resulted in a monograph coordinated by PhD M.Àngels Fortea (BAU) and PhD Patrícia Cativo (U. Lusófona).
A second Call for Papers was launched in mid-2024 with the intention of holding an international congress that took place at the Museu do Design de Lisboa (MUDE) on 30 and 31 January 2025, under the direction of BAU, the Universidade Lusófona and the museum itself, and with the collaboration of various entities and research groups. 30 papers and lectures were presented (4 of them by BAU researchers) organised in four areas: Societies in Transition, Politics and Materialities, Muffled Histories, Languages. A relevant part of the interventions will be published in the International Journal of Film and Media Arts in November 2025.
