Inspired by the rough and untamed landscape of the Danish West Coast, A New Wave, the winner of the category ‘Feel Good Furniture’ at the Danish Design Award 2021, reflects natural textures, shapes, and captivating scenery
With the ambition to trade bad for good, the carpet collection ReForm A New Wave from Ege Carpets is made from fishing nets and water bottles resulting in an interior solution that takes care of both people and the planet.
At the same time, the domestic and B2B-aimed collection strives towards a tactility that invites you to feel the patterns of the sand, the strict lines of the grassy dunes, and the waves washing in.
The combination motivated the jury at the Danish Design Award 2021 to name A New Wave the winner of the category “Feel Good – Furniture”.
Laura Bilde and Linnea Ek Blæhr are the creative forces behind the winning design solution. They share a deep understanding of aesthetics in the fields of functionality, sculptural forms, and tactility. A New Wave was developed as part of the ReForm concept for Danish carpet manufacturer Ege Carpets, a company that aims at recycling waste into resources and keeping components in closed loops to reduce CO2-emissions.
From bottle to backing
While used plastic bottles may be considered waste by some, the people behind A New Wave view them in an entirely different way and use them as the basis for their collections:
“A water bottle contains a vital resource for our well-being. But the bottle itself has lots of applications and we’ve managed to utilize one of them by recycling used water bottles into our patented Ecotrust felt backing for carpet tiles,” says Mette Frydensbjerg Jacobsen, responsible for PR and Communications at Ege Carpets. The innovative production technique converts bottles into soft, yet strong PET felt, which is a long-lasting material with excellent acoustic properties.
Another main feature that makes the New Wave-collection unique in its category is that the carpets are made from old fishing nets. They can drift in the oceans for months or even years, posing a threat to marine life. Ege Carpets collect and clean up the abandoned fishing nets, turning them into regenerable yarn that makes up the multidimensional carpet constructions. By being regenerable, the yarn can be converted into new nylon products after usage, which facilitates their incorporation into a closed-loop system for endless recycling.
Reflecting the Danish West Coast
In the process of designing A New Wave, Laura Bilde and Linnea Ek Blæhr found inspiration from their childhood memories of the Danish West Coast and created a collection of organic and textured designs; Sand, Grass, and Ocean, all of which have a very different texture.
“We tried to work with the textures from the beach with different heights in the surface so the carpet gives you a feeling of walking on a dune or walking in the water,” says Laura Bilde and Linnea Ek Blæhr about their design process and their collaboration with Ege Carpets.
Highly skilled competitors
Laura Bilde, Linnea Ek Blæhr and the team behind A New Wave collection are proud to have won the Feel Good Furniture category at Danish Design Award 2021.
“The Feel Good – Furniture award recognizes the very essence of our company, which is structured around design, sustainability, and well-being. Doing our utmost to protect people and the planet is a responsibility and an opportunity that we are proud to share with many other design companies,” Mette Frydensbjerg Jacobsen says, expressing her respect for the other talented award nominees.
You can read more about the A New Wave collection at Carpet Collection: ReForm a New Wave | Ege Carpets. Check out all the other winners of the Danish Design Award 2021 here.
The “Feel Good – Furniture” award recognizes solutions that are highly aesthetic or elegant while providing a useful function and celebrating the power of design to delight the senses. You can read more about the category here.
Danish Design Award took place at the Fredericia Furniture’s showroom in Copenhagen on November 25, 2021. The finalists of the 2022 edition will be announced this spring.
