Observations: the signs of weathering on materials

In mid-autumn, as the landscape’s verdant cover thins and exposes the layers underneath, the signs of years of exposure to the elements become visible: wood grain raised and silvered by the sun, grooves opened by repeated wetting and drying… Weathering is able to improve natural materials by wearing them away: a testament to the slow, patient work of wind, rain, and light, written onto surfaces that have stood through many seasons and remember them all.
In designed spaces, natural materials that show weather marks or will develop them carry a distinctive form of honesty. Wood, stone, copper: surfaces given permission to show their years, rather than resisting them.

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.