Observations: the honesty of aging

In early autumn, when decaying material becomes more abundant in the landscape, the case against design’s fear of impermanence becomes particularly evident. A felled tree, whose logs begin to show deep cracks, is not ending but transforming, not failing but becoming the ground for the next cycle of growth.
A designed space can choose to embrace the same honesty, allowing its materials to carry the mark of use and time. To be, in some sense, always in process.

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.