In the cloistered courtyard of the Portrait Milano Hotel, where arches frame light like breath between moments, something rare unfolds. Amid the sensory saturation of Milan Design Week, DRIFT offers stillness. Their new installation, Drift Us, created in collaboration with Audi for the House of Progress, invites visitors not to observe, but to participate—to move as wind, to influence space, to return to rhythm.
Known for their meditative sculptural works and immersive installations that bridge nature and technology, Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta have spent nearly two decades translating the invisible systems of the world—light, air, time—into living choreography. Founded in 2007, DRIFT’s Amsterdam-based studio has become internationally recognized for its kinetic installations and experiential environments that explore the intersection of art, science, and the human condition. Their works often challenge the boundaries between the artificial and organic, using in-house developed technologies and painstakingly engineered mechanisms to evoke a sense of wonder, calm, and reconnection.
With Drift Us, they continue this lineage—transforming technological precision into emotional resonance. In collaboration with Audi, whose vision for innovation centers on human experience as much as mobility, the installation becomes a shared meditation on progress. As movement responds to movement, the work acts as a mirror: a space where visitors see not just the artwork, but themselves—slowed, attuned, present.
In this conversation, Ralph Nauta reflects on DRIFT’s return to Milan, the emotional logic of innovation, and why movement is not just a gesture—but a way to remember who we are.
DRIFT, Artists portraits with “Drift Us,” Photo courtesy of Audi.
WHITEWALL: Your installation Drift Us translates natural movement into a robotic, sensory experience. What inspired you to mimic the calming rhythm of wind through a field, and how do you hope this resonates with visitors in the context of Milan Design Week?
RALPH NAUTA: With everything we create, our intention is to reconnect people to their natural state of being. There’s a quiet intelligence in nature—in the way wind moves through a field, in the rhythm of breath—and when we experience that, something within us aligns.
“With everything we create, our intention is to reconnect people to their natural state of being,”
Ralph Nauta
In a context like Milan Design Week, people are constantly rushing, overstimulated, often layered in a digital haze. We rarely give ourselves even five minutes to simply be. So we wanted to create a kind of antidote to that: a moment of presence, where movement becomes meditative and technology becomes a bridge back to our senses—not a distraction from them.
Balancing Technological Precision with the Emotional Quality of Drift Us
WW: This collaboration with Audi emphasizes progress through movement. How did you balance the technological precision with the emotional, almost meditative quality of Drift Us?
RN: That balance is very natural to our process. We rarely start with the technology—we begin with a feeling, a vision, or an idea we want to make tangible. Often, it’s something no one has seen before. And then we figure out how to build it.
We’re fascinated by the idea of technology evolving in harmony with nature, mimicking its frequencies and systems. It’s almost like imagining a world where machines behave not with cold logic, but with organic curiosity—where a block of concrete floats and moves as if it’s part of an ecosystem. How would it relate to others? Would it seek connection, form social structures, communicate?
“We’re fascinated by the idea of technology evolving in harmony with nature,”
Ralph Nauta
These thought experiments drive our work. From there, we collaborate with engineers to develop new tools, often from scratch. We push the limits because that’s the only way to realize something truly new. Years ago, we were the first to attach lights beneath drones—not because drones were the goal, but because we had a vision of how they could echo the natural movements of flocks or wind currents.
To us, the value of art lies in originality. In doing something for the first time—and doing it with intention.
Creating a Dialogue with the Environment
DRIFT & Audi. Drift Us. Audi House of Progress 2025. Photo by Ronald Smits.
WW: You’ve described this work as creating a dialogue with the environment and even aligning with visitors’ breathing rhythms. Can you share more about how human interaction shapes and activates the piece in real time?
RN: Absolutely. This piece is all about resonance. We’ve placed laser sensors throughout the space, so when someone walks through and breaks a beam, they trigger a ripple of movement—almost as if they become the wind.
That gesture flows across the field like breath—soft, physical, responsive. When people enter from different sides, the patterns collide and overlap, like waves folding into one another. We studied how wind behaves in nature—how it begins, shifts, and folds over itself. That research shaped every detail of the choreography.
This version uses just 22 units. But we imagine something much larger—fields of 200, perhaps more—moving as one, breathing as one.
And this is only the beginning. Later this year, I Am Storm—the original seed of this idea—will quietly take root in our new 8,000-square-meter museum in Amsterdam. One of 18 immersive, room-filling works, it’s part of a space created not to exhibit, but to reawaken. The technology, as always, is developed entirely in-house—so that every movement, every sensation, is purely DRIFT.
We’re not revealing much yet. But this isn’t just a museum. It’s something else. A place for sensing. For stillness. For what comes next.
Uniting Progress through Movement with Audi
DRIFT & Audi. Drift Us. Audi House of Progress 2025. Photo by Ronald Smits.
WW: This collaboration with Audi brings together two parallel visions of progress through movement. How do you see these visions complementing one another?
RN: It’s a fascinating dialogue. And I’d even broaden it to speak about cars more generally—because I believe car design is one of the most underrated art forms of our time. People don’t often realize what it takes to create a vehicle: it’s a convergence of all materials, all forms of fabrication, all types of movement and human interaction.
“I believe car design is one of the most underrated art forms of our time,”
Ralph Nauta
As a kid, I was obsessed. I rebuilt an old Volkswagen Beetle over a few summers and learned everything about how it worked. That experience taught me mechanics, but more importantly, it sparked my curiosity about form and function. In many ways, that path led to what we’re doing now.
Audi, in particular, has an incredible legacy in pushing automotive design forward. Their precision, their materiality, their innovation—that attention to detail is something we share. Our worlds might seem different, but at the heart of both is the desire to create objects that move people—not just physically, but emotionally.
So yes, I see it as a true exchange. One built not only on movement, but on meaning.
