Our story / Leah & Kody Kochaver
We’re Leah and Kody. One of us starts with how a room feels. The other starts with how things work. Patina is where those ways of seeing come together.
Follow our story
The first path / Leah
Before the plans and samples, Leah listens. How you live. What you’re drawn to. What would make a room feel like yours.
Her path ran through fine art and communications, then interior design. She came home to Wisconsin in 2018, and in 2023 she founded Middle West Studio in Madison.
Her work brings the practical and the personal together: the plan that makes a room work, the material you want to touch, the piece that feels as though it has always belonged.
“Listen first.Visit Middle West Studio
Design second.”
A room, seen closely.
Before any one piece, there’s the way a room holds together. The space to gather. A place to pause. A sense that you belong here.
This is the kind of judgment we want Patina to carry.
“The best tools don’t replace the work — they help you do the work better.”
That thought runs through his work: begin with the experience, leave room for the person, and build something that holds up beyond its first impression.
The second path / Kody
Kody has spent two decades making complex systems simpler to use. The question underneath has stayed much the same: what should this feel like for the person using it?
His work has taken him through Jydo, Blacktee, and Avidex. Different systems and settings; a continuing interest in tools that help people do their work with more confidence.
With Patina, he sees a gap close to the creative process. Too many tools feel sterile. They organize the task, but leave little room for the looking, connecting, and reconsidering that make design personal.
He’s building toward something that feels at home in that process.
More about KodyWhere the paths meet
Leah knows the difference a designer’s judgment makes. Kody believes the tools should support that judgment, and the discoveries that happen around it.
So we’re building Patina for the studio first: one living document per client, from brief to install, with the designer’s judgment leading and room for the maker’s care.
The client sees the same page the designer does. One direction, agreed, and a record of how the room came together.
A name, and a belief.
Founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 2023.
The surface that develops through age and exposure, adding depth, character, and value.
We’re drawn to things that grow more interesting with time. A timber edge worn smooth. A room that reflects the life inside it. Taste that develops because you keep looking.
We want to build a company that grows that way, too.
Where Time Adds Value.
The next chapter / You
The app and marketplace are pre-launch. We’re inviting people who care about their homes to help shape what comes next. Your questions, preferences, and point of view belong in the conversation.
The Founding Circle. Limited to 200 founding members.
Open wherever you call home.
