This year, the studio will have several projects in different locations such as Berlin, Madrid, Lisbon, Rotterdam, Tilburg, and we are very grateful that throughout the time, the practice of the studio has allowed us to work not only in different cultural contexts and continents but also enabled us to adjust to a variety of different spatial realities.

More than just the scale of the project that is often measured in square meters, our set of skills delves deep into what creating space entails. Art, Theory, and a community of Artists and Thinkers is the medium that the studio uses to explore and develop what we like to call “emotional landscapes”. 

We try to design spaces that live in our memories and most likely will outlive the short life expectancies of some projects.  Something you saw as a child, that you read in a book, listened to in a club, or saw in a movie is most likely to be used as abstract references and starting points to develop a space. Confusion, Disorientation, Control, Love, Ambiguity, Climax, and Desperation, are probably narratives that you will encounter in one of the studio’s projects and our goal is, together with different practitioners, to try to increase the lexicon of feelings we can use and explore. 

Whether the task is to develop a spatial installation for one video or to design a space for 70 artists, the premise is always the same, trying to identify what we want the audience to feel and what memories they will bring home. And, although we work with memories, we are unafraid to highjack others’ experiences, the only rule we like to stand by if we have any is to try not to use the studio’s built projects as references otherwise, you would be dreaming in a loop, and most likely those obsessions end in nightmares.

The balance of how much to build versus allowing artworks to breathe is a very delicate experience that we like to explore together with artists and curators. More than designing spaces, the studio has been helping out these different agents, on how to build these narratives by deciphering possible constellations of artists to creating new ones, always through the lens of interpreting a multitude of spatial qualities. 

D_P_S is a research-based design studio, founded in 2015 by Diogo Passarinho, investigating how emotional contexts can be brought into shaping spatial memories. The work of the studio has been showcased at the Venice Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Baltic Triennial, Hayward Gallery, Palais De Tokyo, Pirelli Hangar Bicocca, Oslo National Museum, Van Abbemuseum, to name a few examples.