Design Map · Eindhoven
Sex and Surroundings
Graduation project by Valeria Ronchi at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
How can design create spaces that question what society has taught us about pleasure, intimacy and our bodies? Responding to sexual imagery that repeatedly reinforces heteropatriarchal gender roles and ideas of what sex should look like, ‘Sex and Surroundings’ proposes conditions for people to imagine their own non-normative eroticism.
Three tent-like structures combine films on new erotic imaginaries exploring body and desires through DIY costumes, digital image glitches of ourselves and non-phallocentric tools for exploring bodily sensation. Designed for semi-public settings, their small scale leaves visitors partly exposed, deliberately blurring the boundaries between privacy and publicness. By staging frictions between comfort and discomfort, attraction and repulsion, exposure and intimacy, the project treats the vulnerability and awkwardness often associated with sex as a common ground for questioning norms, developing greater agency over pleasure and an opportunity for experimentation.