Design Map · Eindhoven
To Become a Trickster
Graduation project by Sergio Pinilla López at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
Set in a crumbling virtual Barcelona, the video game ‘To Become a Trickster’ explores how remote work, tourism, and housing speculation are reshaping class relations in the city. Developed in response to the rise of digital nomadism and growing tensions over affordability, the game asks players to construct their own video-call backgrounds, exposing the everyday performance of professional identity. As the polished backdrop of a work call conceals the mess, stress and labour of daily life, the project suggests that the marketed image of Barcelona similarly obscures the people who keep the city running. It questions why local and foreign workers are so often positioned against one another rather than against the systems that produce inequality. Combining philosophical research, conversations with urban researchers and the designer’s own experience of the city’s changing neighbourhoods, it proposes the trickster as a playful figure who can navigate these conflicting social worlds.