INTERVIEW WITH STUDIO DRIFT AT BRAND NEW WORLD MILANO 2015 @ DUSAN

Posted in BDW Recommends, Brand New World, Brand New World Milano, Interviews

Studio Drift presents their new project Nola in Milan from April 14 – 19th, as one of the eight key international studios who epitomize the new concept of Designers – Makers – Entrepreneurs, rethinking the entire business and creative model of design. Drift’s exhibition is part of BRAND NEW WORLD MILANO 2015 @ DUŠAN, curated and produced by Vesna and Jovan Jelovac. As a part of the Milan 2015 FouriSaloni program, Brand New World shows a pure DESIGN 2.0 philosophy, unthinkable of only a few years ago. The concept is staged in arguably one of the most elegant design showrooms in the city – DUŠAN, Via Antonio Zarotto 1, powered by LAUFEN.

Studio Drift was founded in 2006 by Ralph Nauta and Lonneke Gordijn, both graduates of the world famous Design Academy Eindhoven. Their goal is to create a dialogue between nature and technology, creating a new synergy.

– People find the time to look at art within a gallery setting, but the world is one big exhibition if you only care to look, said Lonneke Gordijn.

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Studio Drift explores the relationship between nature, technology and mankind. Their working process involves continuing collaborations with scientists, university departments, research facilities, programmers and engineers; the results are truly innovative and ground-breaking projects – a testament to the cross-pollination between the technically advanced, the aesthetically beautiful and awareness of future potentials. Their oeuvre includes dazzling site-specific installations that react directly to human behavior, questioning it at the same time. While the visual language of Studio Drift is characterized by dreamy and poetic aesthetics, the concept behind their works is often based on an unexpectedly critical engagement.

– We want to encourage people to see things that they no longer notice; to reach a kind of unconscious recognition that everyone instinctively feels and understands, yet have lost the time for, said Ralph Nauta.

The topic of the exhibition DESIGN 2.0 thinking is laying on the hand: The world has changed, and as we speak the most exciting new stuff is being presented by a completely new wave of designers who are not only creatives, but in the same time makers, producers, entrepreneurs, distributers, own representatives and gallerists…

– At Brand New World in Milan we have presented Nola, together with Buhtiq31. Nola is a landscape of light captured in glass bells. By combining pastel tinted glass with programmable red, green, blue and white led’s, Studio Drift establishes a unique colour palette for the new Dutch design label Buhtiq 31, said Nauta.

Nola by Studio Drift for Buhtiq31 002 copy

Studio Drift is by far most famous for its Obsidian Project, a highly polished and reflective black, organically formed mirror made from synthetic obsidian, and Dandelight, a little light made from a real dandelion.

– We’re also very proud on our new Shylight installation in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam. Furthermore we’re proud to present two projects at Glasstress in Venice this year. We’ll be presenting Obsidian and a new glass project. We have been awarded several times for our creations, such as ‘The best piece of Arte Laguna’ for our Flylight during the Arsenale in Venice. Most recently, together with a creative team, we have won a pitch to create one of the largest interactive permanent light installation in the world on Switzerland’s most important landmark; the Kapellbrücke in Lucerne, concluded Nauta.

Shylights-Rijks-5-copy

For Studio drift the innovation process in design enfolds within itself the wonderful ability to take apart a cultural syntagm as an object, to reduce it to its elements, examine it, change the weight of its parts and components, and re-assemble it so that it would move the trajectory of the world ahead on the evolutionary, professional axis.

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Studio Drift for Brand New World

I stopped working for others because then I have the responsibility and I feel like an advertising agency. When I work for Yello, I can make a fool out of myself. Whatever I do I go through the process of becoming a child, an idiot, totally unimportant. When I have the responsibility to start with it is disturbing." "I think every human is a God. All our life is about becoming like a child, trying to find out who is really hidden inside yourself, who you really are, who is the divine being inside. Great alpinist climb mountains not to become world famous, but to learn something about themselves, to come closer to that inner-child. If you are exposing yourself to the process of climbing the mountain, it is very important you are prepared to make a fool of yourself, to let yourself fall into the emptiness of vague idea, and to have the courage to be a total idiot. Only then you have a chance to die with the smile on your face.

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