Frederico Duarte

Frederico Duarte (Lisbon, 1979) graduated with a degree in Communication Design at the University of Lisbon in 2002, and began working as a designer for Leo Burnett Kuala Lumpur and Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research center in Treviso, Italy. He later joined Experimenta, a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of design, where he worked on curation and communication at ExperimentaDesign, Lisbon’s Design Biennale from 2003 to 2006. Frederico was also assistant curator for the product design section of the exhibition “[P] — Design from Portugal,” which showed in Milan (2004) and Lisbon (2005), and curator for the 4-day Inspired Lisbon by Bombay Sapphire event in February of 2008.

Working since 2006 as freelance designer, curator and writer on various projects and publications – having written for the Portuguese daily newspaper Público and magazines in Portugal (Vida & Viagens, Blue Design, UP), UK (icon, eye), Italy (cluster) and South Africa (Design Indaba). Frederico is also co-author (with Rita João and Pedro Ferreira, a.k.a. Pedrita) of Fabrico Próprio– a book, website, workshop and launch series dedicated to the Design of Semi-industrial Portuguese Confectionery. The three of them are also curating the Portuguese section of Timeless, one of ExperimentaDesign’09 main exhibitions.

Frederico’s master thesis, titled Alvorada, is an exploration of contemporary Brazilian design, for which he is spending one month in Brazil doing research and conducting interviews with product and furniture designers in six cities.