Afonso Borges
Designer, professor of product design project and researcher of objects of daily use.
Graduated in Communication Design from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, Master in Industrial Design from the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, and PhD in Design from the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro.
Dedicated to the teaching of design project and contemporary design criticism, he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Art of the University of Aveiro, scientific coordinator of Design Factory Aveiro and member of the Design Factory Global Network. He has collaborated with the Master in Industrial and Product Design of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, with the School of Art and Design of Matosinhos and with the University of Beira Interior, where he was an Assistant Professor, member of the Scientific Council of the Faculty of Arts and Letters, member of the Faculty Council and Course Director of the 2nd cycle in Industrial Design, having been responsible for the restructuring and accreditation of the courses in Industrial Design.
Integrated member of the research unit ID+, he is a team member of the projects Bosch Illiance WP4 Sensing Home, OliPush and OLIWPT, and was a team member of the financed project Design Obs. Towards a Portuguese Design Observatory: Models, Instruments, Representation and Strategies. He was an integrated member of LabCom, and was a member of the RED and Emades (C-Mast) projects. Researcher of everyday objects, he is the author of articles published in academic publications such as Hundreds of years (UP:2022), Protecting the Memory of Objects from Nostalgia (Ritsumeikan:2019), The Hard Life: an experiment (Springer:2018), Normal: memory, invisibility and meaning in objects (UA:2015), of non-scientific articles such as Blur, The Thin Line (VSCO:2016), New cities, new challenges (Bikevibe:2019), and editor of publications such as Design Obs. Design Observatory in Portugal (UP:2022).
With professional practice in product design, communication design and identity at Box/Borges-Rato studio, in non-profit oneoff projects, within the coordination of Design Factory Aveiro, as well as in support of the partnerships established at the University, he has developed or collaborated in the development of projects for national and international partners such as Alliance Healthcare, Amorim Cork, Área Metropolitana do Porto, BA Glass, Clã, Fiamma, Finsa, Guialmi, Grilo Kitchenware, J. P. Sá Couto, Joalpe, Larus, Mota-Engil, Novartis, Optimus/Nos, Portgás, Porto Editora, Spal, Studio Andrew Howard, Teixeira Duarte, Vodafone and Wook.
He began his activity in 1994, and from 1996 to 2001 he was General Design Coordinator at Porto Editora Multimédia, forming a widely awarded team.
Portugal