New Diner
Restaurante Solidário Baixa, Porto
(Happisodes)
New Diner is a project by designer Matali Crasset for the Restaurante Solidário Baixa in Porto. Working with CASA and ACISJF, the two institutions that run the restaurant and provide daily meals as a social service, Crasset created an indoor kiosk, a site-specific intervention with two main goals: to strengthen the hospitality of the dining hall by bringing together the different activities that take place there, and to highlight human relationships by gently reactivating the atmosphere of the space.
Taking inspiration from the restaurant’s tiled walls, Crasset also designed graphic landscapes and imagined rituals that now animate the mirrors, further enriching the identity of the space.
New Diner is an invitation to the people of Porto to learn more about this restaurant, which, because of its spatial character, recalls a “diner”, an informal place to eat cheaply. The “new” points not only to a re-enchantment of the setting, but also to a broader idea of conviviality. It also means the restaurant becomes a meeting place for rest, sharing and choice.
Designer: Matali Crasset
Associations: CASA voluntary association (Ana Salão) + ACISJF (Inês Lima, Pedro Ferreira da Silva)
Matali Crasset is an internationally renowned French designer who has defended design as an artistic, anthropological, and social practice ever since graduating from ENSCI–Les Ateliers. She is dedicated to creativity, people, and everyday life, continually exploring how design can contribute to community and help us navigate a world in transformation.
Eleonora Fedi is an interior and spatial designer and educator, based in Porto. She has a degree from the Politecnico of Milan (2012) and a master's degree from the College of Art and Design of Matosinhos (2015), where she teaches subjects related to spatial design and the culture of dwelling.
She collaborates with esad—idea as a researcher and designer responsible for exhibition projects, and has been a member of the Porto Design Biennale team since its first edition in 2019.
Her work includes exhibition designs for Galicia – Processes and Forms (2023) curated by David Barro; Erasing the Line (2023); Portugal Pop – Fashion in Portuguese 1970–2020 (2022-2025), curated by Bárbara Coutinho; Sneakers – From the Estado Novo to the Turn of the Millennium (2022), curated by Pedro Carvalho de Almeida.
She co-curated the exhibition Reusing Furniture (2023) together with Maria Milano and has collaborated as an assistant curator on Frontiere – Contemporary Design Expressions, Abitare Itália – Icons of Italian Design, and Riccardo Dalisi – Perfect Imperfection (2019).
Core Programme
Happisodes
Promoted by the Porto Design Biennale, Happisodes are co-design projects between designers, communities, and municipalities that bring to life, in Porto and Matosinhos, the joy of collectively recognising that the present can be reimagined. They are living, inhabited processes where design gives shape to the common.
Publications
Book publishing is a fundamental part of the Porto Design Bienniale, conveying, through the editing and materiality of the books and catalogues, the concept and curation of the projects.
Constellations
The selected projects are independent and autonomous projects regarding curation, financing and production that engage with the theme of this edition.