Pedro Gil Farias 
Multidisciplinary artist and urban researcher working between the virtual and built environments. My work explores informal, self-organized, and collaborative ways of making and inhabiting the city.
Through fieldwork, archives, and digital technologies, I collect fragments of the urban fabric that are later remixed into installations, workshops, audiovisual works, and visual compositions. Making visible the hidden rules, power structures, and everyday narratives that shape contemporary urban environments.
Currently based in Paredes, Portugal, I’m one half of the artist duo WHAT A MESS, a former member of Mesh Print Club, and I work part-time as a design researcher at Humankind, an agency for urban change. Occasionally making print work under the name (de).
OCT 2025 | ‘Lagares do Alvará’ installation @ Architecture Film Festival
Rotterdam
MAR 2025 | ‘Echoes of Us’ installation @ Art Rotterdam. 2025
MAR 2025 | ‘In Search of Productive Friction’ short film @ Milan Machinima Festival
OCT 2024 | Presentation of short film ‘Monuments of Incident’ during Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam as part of the Film & architecture Studio @ AFFR | Rotterdam, NL
OCT 2024 | Solo exhibition @ Social Hub Rotterdam
AUG 2024 | Mesh Group exhibition at Radio Brutus @ Brutus | Rotterdam, NL
MAY 2024 | ‘Lagares do Alvará’ presented in group exhibition at Gentler Futures Festival | Lisboa, PT
OCT 2023 | Group exhibition “Extended Worlds” @ Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU) organised by KONTEJNER | Zagreb, CR
OCT 2023 | ‘What a Mess’ presented at WIP Festival @ CYENS | Nicosia, CY
AUG 2023 | Mesh group exhibition “On Repetition” @ Garage Rotterdam | Rotterdam, NL
MAY 2023 | “Realities in Transition” Test Lab @ V2_Lab | Rotterdam, NL
MAR 2023 | ‘In the process of Making’ Group exhibition @ Treehouse NDSM | Amsterdam, NL
APR 2023 | ‘War for breakfast’ group exhibition @ Neck of the Woods III | Rotterdam, NL
FEB 2021 | Haul Earth Ledger, Virtual Exhibition @ Mozilla Festival 2021
RESIDENCIES & GRANTS
JUN 2024 | CBK Practical funding
AUG 2023 | CBK Practical funding
MAR – MAY 2023 | Realities in Transition resident @ V2_Lab for Unstable Media | Rotterdam, NL
WORKSHOPS & TALKS
JUN 2023 | “The Skatable City” workshop @ Rotterdam Architecture Month, NL
MAY 2023 | The World as it is @ ZIP Space | Rotterdam, NL
APR 2023 | AI in the Hood @ Baltan Laboratories | Eindhoven, NL
APR 2023 | What a Mess workshops @ V2_ | Rotterdam, NL
PUBLICATIONS
P.G Farias., R. Bendor, B.F. van Eekelen (2022) Social dreaming together: A critical exploration of participatory speculative design. In Participatory Design Conference 2022: Volume 2 (PDC 2022 Vol. 2),. ACM, New York, NY, USA. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3537797.3537826
EDUCATION
2013 – 2017 _ BA in Industrial Design by Lisbon’s University Faculty of Fine Arts
2017 – 2020 _ Msc in Strategic Design by TU Delft, thesis on participatory speculative design
2024 _ Film & Architecture Studio at Independent School for the City and AFFR
Key collabs: CYENS, Unity in Diversity, Art Rotterdam, Baltan Laboratories, Extinction Rebellion (XR) Netherlands, Toyno and Humankind.
Leading design research and creative projects at Humankind, an urban change agency focusing on cities and public space. Key Clients & collabs: Amsterdam Municipality; Rotterdam Municipality; EIT (European Institute of Technology) Urban Mobility; TUM; Dutch Cycling Embassy.