Gusts of wind from the door.

Framing the view: intense contrast between the roof overhang, wood counter-top and the south.

Five different materials: Concrete pavers, wood countertop with aluminum window frame, hydrangeas in the wind, metal stool, and plastic chair & table.

Acoustic map. The source and quality of sound.

I sat in a high-end coffee shop, at a bar with the cash register behind me.  The contrast of light and dark between the inside and outside was intense. Most of the surfaces inside were polished and hard, creating a lot of reverberations of conversation and the banging and whining from the coffee machinery.

The bar I was sitting at was wood, but wood that has been cut to crisp corners, polished and varnished.  Despite being a natural material, the wood became a human artifact; it lost many of its organic qualities in the manufacturing process.  It was perfectly smooth without the natural curves and divots from raw wood.  No knots or normal defects were found.  Running fingers over its surface was like touching any other human-made material – neutral in temperature and without variation in texture. It was rigidly and aggressively rectangular. It added an organic element to the visual landscape but not the multi-sensorial space.