Design Map · Eindhoven
Grounding 1359
Graduation project by Luca Weste at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Inspired by Italy’s pirate radio networks, ‘Grounding 1359’ explores how communities can reclaim abandoned technologies like AM radio to create spaces for communication beyond algorithmic platforms and commercial media. Drawing on extensive field research with pirate radio operators, autonomous social centres and historians of free broadcasting, it reveals how technologies can be “squatted” to sustain collective forms of listening and exchange. The installation allows visitors to tune in to the frequency broadcast using portable radios scattered throughout the space, while the antenna itself serves as both a transmitter and a gathering place for live events. Rather than challenging dominant communication systems by offering an alternative, the project adopts the political strategy of desertion: withdrawing into abandoned infrastructures to develop more localised ways of communicating and forming community.