The spaces we inhabit play an integral role in our lives and thoughtfully designed home provides a place to express our “living essentially”, to rest and to foster our relationships. Through a mix of portrayed profiles we’ve welcomed into the designers, entrepreneurs, curators, musicians and stylists shared values, the way those ideals have shaped their homes and the ways their homes have in turn shaped them with more a deeply personal mentality.
Radis Furniture team welcomes us into the material world that embodies the values of slow living. This view of living isn’t about laziness, nor is it about forgoing luxury. It’s about identifying what, and whom to reclaim our time and devote it to whatever brings us joy and meaning that represent the heart. The diverse key principles and kernels of slow living, such as cultivating sustainability and simplifying our lives and reclaiming the bedrock of our values, that brings us back to our leisure time.
Usually, the phrase “slow living” often brings to mind images of work-free days spent reading in a hammock, maybe a cup of green tea or matcha in hand. While this may be the case, the physical structure of slow living takes many different forms in many different spaces. It could mean long Sunday mornings spent in bed instead of behind kitchen table, and for others, it could mean something personal and on of the strongest ways we manifest these life fundamental beliefs is by expressing ourselves through our surroundings and homes.
While our homes can function as places we retreat to, we also seek to connect within them. In this way, they become more active participants in our lives. This eventually is that feeling of “home” following us from space to space. Whatever form it takes, our home act as a place where we come together and become closer. The way it cultivates our relationships under the roof even if it could mean blissfully alone.
Sideboard and TV-stand NOBLE oak veneered plywood (photo: Radis Furniture)
We asked around the globe 3 questions about favoured furnishing item if some of us have found it, about their personality. Is it more oak or plywood and advice they can give about furnishing own space plus surroundings? Here are some answers from worldwide.
1. Your favourite furnishing item, if You have found it?
2. Are You oak or plywood person?
3. Best advice You can give about furnishing Your space/surroundings?
Markus based in Düsseldorf, Strategist-Planner-Speaker-Marketeer-Curator
1. Wogg 7 table from Switzerland. Was my absolute favourite table and I found it at eBay years ago.
2. Plywood (but even more aluminium).
3. Take your time. It’s an ongoing journey and in my case a collection of memories, things for years and coincidences.
Krystal from Luzern, design shop curator
1. God. I look a 100’s every day. I love a good mid-century chair but a modern Roly-poly makes me smile. But my favourite is a light I got in a Broki – it’s a round white ball in a cool chrome circle tube setting.
2. The question is harder than it sounds! I think plywood.
3. It sounds so cliche but I think the most important thing is to surround yourself with what you really love – like purchase things because you can’t stop thinking about them / things don’t have to match -it makes a well connected and comforting energy at home!
Tuomas from Paris 80% and Barcelona 20%, fashion director SSAW Magazine
1. A 1970s Michel Ducaroy Marsala sofa in our Barcelona apartment, we found at our favoured dealer Modulolab over there and some mismatched 1930s-1980s Artek furniture collected when living in Helsinki for 15 years.
2. I’m Finnish, so plywood as long as it’s Alvar Aalto, hehe.
3. Just take your time and buy everything slowly, purchase only pieces you love and go to lots of second stores and markets. NO IKEA!
Lisa from Paris, stylist and bistro crocodile
1. My favourite item is pouf. With fur on the top and with wooden feet.
2. I think more Oak.
3. And you have to know how to optimize space 🙂
Keith from Melbourne, graphic designer
1. Sofa is typically the largest and most likely your anchor piece in your living room. And you gonna spend a loooots of time on it. It has to be comfy.
2. I’m more fan of a one piece of a heavy hardwood rather than a thin layers of wood glued together. Feels more quality to me.
3. Spacious.
Monta, Riga, swimwear designer
1. Some Antique vase/boul I found in some second-hand shop.
2. Plywood, yes
3. To leave a space for the mind. I keep as few furniture as possible, only what I need.
Masha, Moscow and Paris, designer/artisan, working with antique textiles
1. I think that my favourite is “my grandmother’s table”. It’s a very old boudoir in wood with a mirror from the beginning of 20 century. Actually, before her’s, it was my great-grandmother’s. And now it’s mine;)
2. oak! 100% oak
3. the basis: wood floor and white walls. And not a lot of furniture but the items that you really like and use. At this moment I’m very fond of all the beautiful designer’s chairs from the 60’!
Santa from Riga, curator
1. Bed, my sacred and safe place. Is old, really old but I like old.
2. Oak, for sure
3. Keep around things that help you organize your stuff or things that make you feel like home.
Tomohiro, Amami (Japan), musician
1. Shoji a Japanese paper sliding door. Most useful things.
2. My house is built from cedar but I adore plywood for furniture.
3. Use natural materials as possible / do it by yourself as you can, then your love is instant.
Shelf PIX oak veneered plywood (photo: Radis Furniture)
Naty, St. Petersburg, ballerina
1. I adore my Aalto stool for morning coffee
2. I am 100% plywood girl!
3. Only buy things that are pretty. Practical is boring. But if they are pretty for your eyes too- then win-win. Your eyes should rest at home looking at things you love
Satis from Perth (Australia), potter
1. My Burkhard Vogtherr armchair. For all my wine, tears and laugh.
2. Plywood, plywood, plywood
3. Less is more. I have only six things in my home and I don’t need anything else. And I really like what I own. Your home must reflect you not style and trends.
Ieva from Helsinki, art teacher
1. My favourite furniture item is my grandmother’s soviet modernism armchair that I restored this spring when under covid lockdown 🙂 I also very much love nicely framed graphic artworks, screen prints.
2. Love the sturdiness and age-old wisdom of oak.
3. Creating a space/an environment of personal minimalism – only bringing in things you appreciate, love and that help you (in any way imaginable). Being in a mood of flow when decorating, letting yourself be :).
The glaze of conclusion when we speak out. Here is little appreciation to plywood.
As compared to wood, one of the primary advantages of using veneer is stability, the chances of splitting or cracking are reduced. Another advantage of the veneer is sustainability – furniture made with wood veneer uses less wood than the same piece of furniture made with solid wood. Each sheet of veneer is unique and veneers are a very economical method of using wood. Almost all parts of the stem are used for the base material of veneers, thus optimally utilising wood. But there is more. Radis Furniture is using formaldehyde-free certified veneer core plywood for a wide range of products. With Radis Furniture you can choose CARB2 plywood in both ways as usual birch or oak-covered veneer, depends what kind of “person” you are. The CARB2 — it has become a new standard for both of the worlds.
Sideboard PIX oak veneered plywood (photo: Radis Furniture)