Ask og Eng is Creating a Trend for Bamboo Furniture

Katrin

Interview with Kine Ask Stenersen, co-founder of the Ask og Eng Studio. Their story started after creating several sustainable kitchens and bamboo furniture for their home. Kristoffer proposed bamboo as a material for their first kitchen. Kine and Kristoffer fell in love with the material and use it for building all the furniture for Ask og Eng Studio. They use bamboo just from certified plantations. This bamboo is not only sustainable but also produced responsibly.

Hi Kine, so happy to have you here. I am very grateful to interview you for our interior design magazine Being. Can you please introduce yourself and your brand? 

Kine

I am a mother to two boys, and an entrepreneur, and started Ask og Eng together with my husband Kristoffer in 2016. I love my job and family and feel so grateful for the people that I have and the experiences I get to enjoy. But I also crave quite a lot of alone time. I do yoga and meditate daily to keep my mental health in balance. I love going to new places, learning, and discovering new things

Katrin

How did the idea of creating Ask og Eng come to you? What was your inspiration?

Kine

We started Ask og Eng after having built our first kitchen in our first apartment together. So the idea of creating a company was never intentional. We wanted to find sustainable solutions when renovating, and when Kristoffer, who is an architect, came across bamboo as material in a project he was working on, he asked if we should not just build the kitchen ourselves. However, we had never really built anything before or renovated anything, besides the one wall we had put up while looking at YouTube videos to figure out how to do it. But we took to it. So when we later decided to move, expecting our first child, we decided to build a bamboo kitchen once again. And at that time I was on maternity leave and started questioning my life choices.  I was not in a good place and not happy in my life, so I felt I needed to change it. All I wanted was a good and healthy everyday life and working with bamboo and interior gave me so much joy, so it was from there we started talking about designing and making sustainable furniture for others as well. So my inspiration was mainly creating better days for me and my family, just wanting to feel better by being able to create. 

Katrin

Do you have any interesting, curious facts about your brand?

The bamboo is ready to be harvested after 4-6 years – in comparison to trees that use about 50 years.

Kine

1. Our workshop is located by the fjord in Drammen, Norway with beautiful views.  

2. We deliver our kitchens and bamboo furniture to homes and projects in several countries in Europe.

3. Most days in our teams, there is at least one laughing fit involved.

Katrin

What is your company’s vision? Which place does sustainability play in it?

Bamboo is a very beautiful material and it is of really high quality and durability, but also it is a sustainable choice.

Kine

Since our company came from something very much organic, and not so much an idea, we have never had very clear visions. Our visions are changing and evolving all the time, and I think also that is something people can recognize. And sustainability is and has always just been en selvfølgelighet and if we can contribute.

Katrin

What does make your furniture unique?

Kine

I will say it is that we make it out of bamboo, something that is not so common in Europe and I think we manage to show it in a different way. Our attention to detail in design and craftsmanship is one of our proudest qualities. 

Katrin

So the question here is why did you choose bamboo? 

Kine

Bamboo is a very beautiful material and it is of really high quality and durability, but also it is a sustainable choice. Bamboo, which is actually a type of grass, grows significantly faster than trees – up to a meter per day. This means that the bamboo is ready to be harvested after 4-6 years – in comparison to trees that use about 50 years. During growth, bamboo absorbs more Co2 than is released during production, something that makes it Co2 neutral over the complete lifecycle. And it grows this fast without using any pesticides, herbicides, or artificial fertilizers.

We use bamboo, which only works with certified plantations, in our furniture. Because of this, we can be sure that bamboo is not only sustainable but also produced responsibly.

Katrin

I am curious to know more about the manufacturing process. 

Kine

To know more I recommend you watch the video.

Kine

We also recycle all that we can at the workshop, we use as much as possible of the bamboo when designing and making the bamboo furniture, and the smaller pieces left, are given to other people and companies to use in wood fires. We also try our best to use sustainable solutions in all of the processes.

Katrin

What are your maintenance recommendations?

Kine

Like any other natural product, bamboo should be treated after a period of time, approx. once a year to every two years, or as much as the amount of wear and tear demands.

For simple maintenance of your bamboo kitchen or furniture, we recommend that you use cloth and only water. For tougher stains, we recommend using a cleaning spray from Rubio Monocoat. This will remove stains and will also make your product last longer.

For a bit more powerful maintenance we recommend that you top coat your product with transparent hard wax oil.

Katrin

I know that you are located in Norway, Belgium, and Denmark. Are you working just locally in these countries or internationally as well?

Kine

We do work more and more internationally. We just more or less grab the chances we get and think that if others can do it, so can we. 

Katrin

I want to ask a personal question. Which profession did you dream about when you were a kid?

Kine

Photographer, which is so funny, because now it is such a big part of my job, as I myself photograph many of the projects that we do. And I did study it for a year in Australia in my twenties, but I left it back then, as I thought I had no talent and would never be able to work with photography. So that is full circle for you.

Katrin

I believe together we can change the world for the better. Do you? What is your personal view on the future of our planet? 

Kine

Of course, I believe that too. However, I am also rather pessimistic these days with all that is going on. But as I do believe the little things matter, I believe even more in using one’s voting rights to vote for the political parties that have the power to change. And that is what I think is a bit worrying now that you see what is going on politically around the world.