Observations: sand and the case for layering materials

When examined closely, coarse sand reveals itself as a mixture: pale curls of shell, dark grains of stone and mineral, each one its own colour and its own hardness, each one arrived from a different place. Sand’s character comes exactly from this variety: many different materials and tones that blend into a whole while remaining distinct.
Designed spaces are also wholes made of different components, and they earn character the same way: layering textures and colours in harmonious yet varied combinations.

The Observations grow from a daily habit of noticing details in nature and drawing design insights from them. They’re collected in a monthly digest as part of anooi’s newsletter, which gathers the studio’s world and explores the idea of nourishing spaces. The same attunement shapes the studio’s work, lives in A Biophilic Year – a book-object and online archive on people, nature, and design – and becomes a sensory practice with In Season, a seasonal physical letter.