The Many Accents of Design: SOTAQUE’s Lusophone Voices in Lisbon

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Portuguese is officially spoken across nine countries and by more than 260 million people worldwide. Yet within this shared language lies profound variation. Pronunciation shifts across geographies, with vowels opening or closing, consonants softening or stretching, and rhythms subtly transforming meaning. These variations, known as sotaques (accents), are more than linguistic curiosities, they signal origin as lived experience: shaped by land, memory and movement.

SOTAQUE, a new collective project launching at Lisbon Design Week 2026, starts from this idea and translates it into design. Bringing together 10 designers based in Portugal with roots in Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau and Macau, their exhibition at LDW '26 asks how diasporic experiences become form, material and gesture.

Presented at Moldo Studios, in the heart of Lisbon, SOTAQUE unfolds as a gathering of many voices with diverse trajectories: those born in Portugal, those who migrated in childhood, or arrived as adults, to reflect on how diasporic movement informs contemporary design practice and how objects become carriers of identity, memory, culture and ideology—negotiating between ancestry and the realities of a globalised, technologically mediated present. In the conversation below, curator and initiator Miguel Saboya reflects on how the project was born, why Lisbon is the right place for its inception, and what a more diverse understanding of “Portuguese design” might look like in the years to come.

How was Sotaque born and what brought you together as a group?

The Sotaque project emerged from a desire to connect individuals who share a language - Portuguese - but come from different backgrounds. When I first reached out to the designers, I was personally curious to understand what we shared culturally and how the histories of our countries intertwine. Over time, we realized that beyond our language and the fact that we are designers, there were other things connecting us, diasporic experiences, perceptions… but also many differences. It was with this intention of coming together around what unites us, while celebrating what sets us apart, that everything began to take shape. This kind of exchange within the Lusophone network already exists in literature and music, and it felt natural to extend it into the world of design as well.

How did the collaboration with Moldo Studios come about, and why did you choose to present Sotaque there for the first time, during Lisbon Design Week?

The collaboration with Moldo came about very spontaneously. During an after-hours event organized by LDW, we were invited to present the Sotaque project there. We were immediately captivated by the space. It’s a place that reveals itself slowly, with a unique architecture, hidden in the heart of Lisbon. The experimental and poetic spirit of the space naturally aligned with that of our project.

The name Sotaque means 'accent'. Every accent is unique and indicates where someone comes from. How does this concept come to life in your exhibition? How does design connect with language?

Our accent is something we inherit not genetically, but through the places we move through. It carries something of our home and our trajectory. It reflects origin, yet it is always in transformation. The Portuguese language, and the many accents it holds today, carries this layered history, shaped by different peoples, with words used in Brazil rooted in African languages, and Brazilian expressions now part of Lisbon’s everyday vocabulary. And, on a more intimate level, each person finds their own way of expressing themselves within these accents. It’s a rich field to explore, much like how materials, techniques, and knowledge travel across oceans and are reinterpreted in different contexts. Design, too, carries these nuances: our lived experiences and the influences we absorb along the way. This is present in the individual pieces in the exhibition, but also in the interplay between them. It’s not about telling a single story, but about navigating the ways that all these singular expressions by different people subtly converge and depart from one another.

Portuguese is a shared language, but the diasporic experiences from the countries represented in the exhibition are very different. How does this show up in the pieces and materials you chose for this exhibition?

The richness of materials in the exhibition is surprising — ranging from basketry and ceramics to 3D printing and the reuse of industrial waste. Rather than mapping neatly onto geographies, these materials speak of movement and trajectory, of the diasporic experience itself. They reflect how a designer might bring a raw material from their country of origin and shape it using a technique discovered after migrating, or how a technique can be reimagined in a new material, absent in its place of origin. Craft unfolds into contemporary design, while the reverse also happens: a return, from within contemporary design, to more essential gestures and ancestral knowledge.

Did you make any discoveries while creating this exhibition that will influence your design approach or inspire you to perhaps travel to some of the represented countries (if you haven't already) to form new collaborations?

The greatest discovery has been the people I’ve had the opportunity to connect with, getting to know more deeply the trajectories and personalities behind each designer’s talent and work. At its core, this is the story we want to convey, as it allows each piece to become much more than just a chair, a vase, or a table. And yes, from the very beginning, there has been a desire to expand this project not only in Portugal, but also to our countries of origin.

When you think about the future of Sotaque, what would you like this project to become? How can it pave the way for a more diverse view of what constitutes and influences design in Portugal?

We want Sotaque to be a living community of exchange within the vast Lusophone network. A space to strengthen bonds, learn, and support one another, but also to open doors to other collaborations. And not only in design: in this first exhibition we are collaborating with people from different fields within the Lusophone network — from music to gastronomy — which is incredible. As for what defines Portuguese design, it is very clear to me that one of its greatest strengths today is the diversity of origins and perspectives contributing to the scene. These accents — some longstanding, others newly arrived — all take part in shaping and enriching Portuguese design, making it more multifaceted, complex, and, in my opinion, far more interesting.