Planned weathering and the real thing

At the south end of Reload. The commercial strip built over the buried Odakyu tracks. There is one corner where the wooden cladding has actually weathered. One slat has cracked. The crack catches the morning light differently from the undamaged slats on either side.

The difference: the slats to the left and right are still performing weathering. The cracked one has simply weathered.

Reload opened in 2019 and was designed to look provisional, worn, close to wabi-sabi. Seven years in, most of it still looks designed-to-look-worn. That one slat has crossed over.

I didn’t photograph it. I’m not sure why. Maybe because what it needed was to be noticed, not documented.

[DRIFT] “what it needed was to be noticed, not documented”. anthropomorphizes the crack, turns genuine uncertainty into a poetic rationale. The honest version: I didn’t photograph it and I don’t have a good reason. The observation was enough.