ANNA Stay has two protective sliding shells that allow you to open up and become part of your surroundings. The inner shell is made of double glass, the outer shell is made of wood. By adjusting the two shells ANNA changes and adapts to the weather, your mood or the occasion. ANNA allows to connect to a reality in which we naturally belong. In wintertime, the insulated wooden shell of ANNA keeps the warmth inside like a thick winter coat. In spring or autumn, the glass keeps the rain outside or lets the sun in to warm up the space. If it warms up too much, you can either slide and close the wooden layer to block the warming sun or slide the glass layer open to let a cool wind enter. In all seasons you can live and sleep under the glass or in the outdoors with protective layers within reach. This way you experience the beauty of a fierce rain shower from under the glass roof, you wake up among the birds in the early morning and you are mesmerized at night by the starry sky directly above your bed. 

By sliding her layers, ANNA takes you by the hand to reconnect step by step, with Mother Nature, which we believe is incredibly important for our own health and the health of our planet. Margriet Sitskoorn, neuroscientist at the university of Tilburg, explains that what happens in the brain while staying at ANNA is actually a strong cognitive response. That is because your whole body is involved in opening up the whole cabin: From the perspective of the brain, you create your own outdoors. This is called Embodied Cognition. Which is completely different and many times more powerful than what happens if you just walk outdoors through an ordinary door. Basically, the cabin prepares the brain to open up and connect to the natural environment. And when the brain is fully connected to its natural environment recovery processes get going which are important to prevent stress and depression, from which so many of us suffer due to the way we live.

ANNA is modularly developed, which results into short assembly time on site (~5 days) and therefor a minimal ecological disruption. Due to dry connections she can be disassembled and moved at any time without a trace in nature. ANNA will outlive you, but if ever needed her materials can be separated and reused. Besides, to ensure a low transportation footprint, ANNA is designed in such a way that 80% of her unique parts can, via a digital file, be produced locally all over the world. Furthermore, rubber and aluminium extrusion techniques were used, resulting into 26 for ANNA uniquely designed profiles to ensure perfect water and wind tightness. The most innovative part being the patented aluminium rails with integrated wind labyrinth. As materials expand differently in a range of climates and conditions, one massive challenge we met is realizing a combined material tolerance of less than 1 millimetre in the moving parts.