about — patternine® Surface Studio
(01)
Patternine is the surface studio of designer Craig Woehrle: original patterns, licensed for architecture, materials and products, and engineered with fabrication partners so that what you specify is what gets built.
patterns in the catalog
validated making methods
material partners
Product of the Year 2022
the studio
(02)
Patterns built to travel.
The studio works from Whidbey Island, Washington. The catalog holds sixty patterns and keeps growing. Each starts as a rule-based geometry with its own repeat logic, so the same design can move from a two-foot ceiling tile to a ten-foot backlit wall panel without losing its structure.
The patterns start as rhythm observed in the field: tide lines on the Salish Sea, sediment in motion. We carve, cast, print and press those movements into material.
Where the work goes
01 /
Architectural walls and ceilings
02 /
Hard surface and composite materials
03 /
Textiles and soft goods
04 /
Furniture, fixtures and accessories
05 /
Moving objects and transportation
06 /
Home and lifestyle products
the model
(03)
The platform, in five levels.
Each level exists so a pattern you shortlist becomes a surface you can specify. Specifying today? Start at 03 — Products.
01 — Patterns
The design work: an open catalog of geometries drawn from natural systems, each carrying repeat rules and fabrication constraints from the first sketch.
02 — Surface Systems
A surface system pairs a partner material with a production-tested making method and is named for both: Durasein + CNC machining, Archifibe EzoBord + thermoformed tile. The system carries the full specification. In a proprietary system, the material partner fabricates with methods they own. In an aggregate system, our manufacturing partners produce it and the product stays with Patternine. Seven methods are validated today, from 3-axis CNC to digital print on glass.
03 — Products
A surface system fixed into a product format. You choose the pattern; the product settles everything else.
P9-D Panels /
Durasein + CNC machining
30″ × 120″ interior solid surface panels, ½″ thick, backlit and thermoform capable, Class A, 100+ colorways.
MasterFormat 06 62 00 · 09 77 23
P9-AC Tiles /
Archifibe EzoBord + thermoformed tile
2′ × 2′ tegular acoustic ceiling tiles in PET felt, 46 colorways.
MasterFormat 09 51 13 · 09 84 13
04 — Work
The installed record, from a showroom in the Netherlands to a tower in Jeddah.
05 — Ideas
Speculative studies across sport, marine and product, ahead of any commission.
Material partners
(001)
Durasein®
(002)
Envel®
(003)
Lumicor®
(004)
Archifibe®
method
(04)
From tide line to tool path.
The method starts at the water. Craig Woehrle sketches what it does: flow, interference, repetition. At the desk he rebuilds those observations as parameters. Adjust one and the geometry shifts while the logic holds.
We design every pattern against the machine that will make it: the axis count, the shape of the tool, the depth of relief and the shadows it throws, whether the surface will be lit from behind. That is why the drawings survive fabrication.
The first production piece with Durasein started as mussel shells at Penn Cove. It ended as a backlit feature along the central hallway of an architecture firm in Shanghai.
team
(05)
Who does what.
Founder & Creative Director, patternine®
Sets the design direction and the fabrication rules that get each pattern built, so the work looks right and performs as specified.
Craig trained in architecture at Yale and landscape architecture at Harvard, where studio time went to digitizing water and sediment flows to study what came back. The habit turned into a method; the method turned into a company.
Before Patternine he was a lead designer at surfaceLAB, outside Seattle. The catalog stays under one author’s hand: every pattern drawn, parameterized and released under the patternine® mark.
When Architectural Record named the Durasein collection a 2022 Product of the Year, the credit read “architect Craig Woehrle and Durasein.”
Brand, patternine®
Michael Bustin
Finds the next place the work should show up, and keeps the studio’s voice consistent when it gets there.
Manufacturing, P9AP® & Bierson Corp.
Don Casebier
Runs fabrication through Bierson Corp’s CNC shop in Central Point, Oregon, keeping production and delivery on schedule.
recognition
(06)
2008–present
Publication
Citation
Year
start a project
(07)
Put a P9 surface in your project.
for specifiers
Send drawings, dimensions or the material you have in mind. We return pattern options, the specification data and a route to fabrication. Samples of the Durasein collection are on Material Bank.
for manufacturers & brands
Patternine also licenses patterns and develops new surface systems with manufacturers and brands: we take a partner material and build the system that makes it specifiable.