This visual essay addresses interconnected aspects of the relationship between the place brand “Porto.”, commissioned by the Porto City Council, and urban protest: how the visual branding of the city is used to naturalize, thus legitimizing the Council’s vision and its development plan, inhibiting public debate; how it simultaneously and involuntarily enables protest, by providing material for subversive actions; and how debate is reclaimed through the use of an instrument with unifying ambitions, aimed at consensus. Through the analysis of these relationships, we address both intended and unintended roles of design in the shaping of democratic life in urban contexts.
The essay interweaves photographs of the brand’s placement, mainly by the author, with a collection of images documenting examples of its subversions in the city’s streets, by different authors who have kindly permitted the author to use them in this essay.
Published in Monu Magazine #34 – Protest Urbanism
Upmeyer B. (ed). Board Publishers. 2021.
Acknowledgements
This article is part of the research project “Visual and semantic identities of the city of Porto: an ascertainment of the contributions of informal dwelling”, funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the European Social Fund (ESF), under the grant PD/BD/150641/2020.
The following people generously contributed to this article with their images: 3 Pontinhos, Inês Barbosa, Luís Camanho, Pedro Ferreira and Pedro Figueiredo. To all of them, many thanks.
Comments are only available for registered users.