Durable, safe, protective, ages well — in fact, age makes it more beautiful and captivating — versatile, suited to every use, malleable enough to interpret and adapt to any style of architecture and furnishing. The qualities and virtues of timber as a material for use in architecture and furniture products are well known and beyond dispute.

In praise of timber

"Of all materials, it is the closest to man," wrote the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. "Man likes the company of wood, he likes to feel it under his hands, pleasant to the touch and to the eye. Wood is universally beautiful." The literature is rich with eulogies of timber, the material of choice for many great architects past and present.

More recently, the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, known for his love of timber and for his revival of ancient construction techniques from mountain architecture, wrote a poetic tribute to its being a material that has been eternal on earth since the beginning — a silent friend of mankind. "There are materials that drain your energy. Wood does not need the energy of your skin. It doesn't matter whether it's hot or cold: in a timber building, the temperature you feel is always close to what you would want. If it is very hot, it is always two or three degrees lower, and vice versa. Wood doesn't need you: it just stands there."

And Roland Barthes, the French semiotician, wrote: "In whatever form, wood eliminates the cut of angles that are too sharp, the chemical coldness of metal; when you handle and strike it, wood neither vibrates nor grates, it has a sound that is at once dull and clean; it is a familiar and poetic substance, which keeps man in a continuity of contact with the tree, the table, the floor."

Slow wood, designing with timber today

In Italy there is now an enterprise dedicated to timber projects, built on a new business model: a constantly evolving network of craftspeople and small and medium-sized enterprises specialising in the working of this material, where craftsmanship, manual and artistic processes, and high-technology machinery coexist to create the most surprising forms in wood. It is called Slow wood and was founded in 2009 out of a deep passion for timber and a lengthy, detailed research project conducted across the world, which grew into a strong body of know-how in selecting the most suitable and sustainable timbers for every product or project.

"To design well with timber you have to know it, love it and respect it. That is why we look for a passion for the material and the use of sustainable timber species among our craftspeople and within our network." In the vision of Marco Parolini, chief executive and co-founder of Slow wood together with Gianni Cantarutti, sustainability means creating furnishings built to last, through the use of solid wood sourced from certified forests.

For Slow wood, the best tool each of us has at our disposal to limit the environmental impact of our choices is the reduction of waste and consumption. Using a material like timber is in fact a challenge in the furnishing and design market: alternative materials are ever more numerous. Durability, and therefore sustainability, combined with the uniqueness represented by every piece of wood found in nature, make it a winning challenge.

Slow wood's timbers come from certified forests

An inherently sustainable design material, timber requires particular attention to rules regarding its origin. Slow wood offers architects and designers only timber sourced from certified forests for use in their projects. It holds Fsc certification — an acronym for Forest Stewardship Council — which guarantees the traceability of the material and responsible forest management: that is, the use of timber from forests where the number of trees of each species felled each year is always kept under control.

The xylarium: getting to know timber

The xylarium — from the Greek xylon (wood) and théke (chest, storeroom) — is a wood library, created by Slow wood and based in Milan and Udine. Its purpose is to disseminate and promote the qualities of this material through a physical and digital collection of different species from around the world. Both technical and commercial information is available to architects and designers. In Udine, the Xiloteca Lignamundi holds more than 1,700 wood species collected by expert Cantarutti, and can be visited by appointment.