lonneke gordijn on objects' hidden dreams

designboom hosts studio drift co-founder in milan

As the co-founder of Studio DRIFT, Lonneke Gordijn has spent two decades at the vanguard of experiential design, choreographing the delicate intersection of nature, technology, and human perception. From kinetic installations that mimic the flight patterns of birds to sculptures that breathe, DRIFT’s work consistently explores the ‘life’ within inanimate objects. It is this profound focus on material agency and the hidden rhythms of our environment that makes her one of the definitive voices for a conversation on the post-human future of design.

At designboom’s ROOM FOR DREAMS during Milan Design Week 2026, Gordijn challenged the fundamental ego of design in an interview centered on non-human entities as ‘emotional carriers’. Together with designboom Managing Editor Claire Brodka, she explored what happens when we decenter the human and acknowledge the active, dreaming agency of materials and machines.

Claire Brodka and Lonneke Gordijn at ROOM FOR DREAMS | image by Camilla Mansini with Giorgio Gagliano

conversation at room for dreams centers on non-human wishes

‘If we decenter the human, design is no longer a monologue of control,’ Gordijn stated. ‘We are moving into a space of post-human imagination where we must ask what the material wants to become. It is not about what we want from the object, but about the trajectory the object is already on.’ In this context, Gordijn reframed the creative process as a collaboration with material agency.

The dialogue delved deep into the concept of objects as ‘emotional carriers’: not as passive vessels for human sentiment, but as ‘dream machines’ that carry their own ecological and political agency. ‘These objects are active participants in our reality,’ Gordijn explained. ‘When we look at infrastructures or machines as emotional carriers, we recognize they have behaviors and forms of desire that exist independently of us. They are not just tools; they are entities that dream with us, carrying the weight of our ecological future and the complexity of our political systems.’

Lonneke Gordijn | image by Teska Overbeeke

machines as beings with a life force and ecosystem equality

Gordijn highlighted how even the most rigid infrastructures possess a form of life. She argued that acknowledging the agency of these systems is essential for the next era of design. ‘We often think of infrastructures as dead matter,’ she noted. ‘But they have trajectories. They have a form of agency that shapes how we feel and how we move through the world. To design for a post-human world is to respect the life-force of the machine and the ecosystem equally.’

The Studio DRIFT co-founder specifically references ‘Drifter’ as a prime example of a machine or object that functions with its own agency. She connects this project to the concept of non-human dreaming by explaining that the object’s ability to defy gravity isn’t just a human-controlled trick, but a manifestation of the material’s ‘desire’ to exist outside our conventional physical expectations. ‘We think of concrete as something that anchors us, something static. But in Drifter, the material is allowed to dream of being air. By using technology to give it agency, we are not just making a sculpture; we are facilitating a non-human entity’s expression of freedom.‘

Gordijn left the audience with a provocation: to stop viewing design as an act of human dominance and start viewing it as an act of listening to the ‘desires’ of the world around us. ‘The Master of the future is not a commander of materials,’ Gordijn concluded, ‘but rather one who can facilitate the agency of the ecosystem.‘

drifter, 2019 | image courtesy of amos rex / stella ojala, 2019