RugYourCity is back! This time its sights are set on Los Angeles

• Fine Oriental rugs have depicted their local cultures for centuries: Floorplan's RugYourCity platform brings meaning to contemporary rug designs by collaborating with architects and designers to create modern rugs inspired by modern cities. 
  
  
• RugYourCity's first set of NYC-inspired designs was successfully funded on Kickstarter in September 2015 and is currently available for pre-order on floorplanrugs.com
  
  
• RugYourCity Kickstarter backers chose the subject of the second Design Challenge: Los Angeles.  More than 38 cities in 13 countries (and one in Middle Earth!) were nominated, including Los Angeles, Istanbul, Paris, Nashville, and Akron.
  
  
• The Los Angeles Design Challenge kicks off June 15, 2016 and is open to contributors around the world. Details on how to participate can be found on the challenge website. 
  
  

June 15, 2016 — Los Angeles: Floorplan, a designer-founded company intent on creating a better rug buying experience, today opened the second Design Challenge for its RugYourCity platform, this time with a focus on Los Angeles.

RugYourCity is a project to create handmade rugs inspired by modern cities, refreshing the centuries-old tradition of depicting local life in classic Persian and Turkish rugs. Floorplan launched RugYourCity on Kickstarter in August 2015, and in September, surpassed its funding goal to produce a New York-inspired pilot collection. Floorplan collaborated with designers, artists and architects to develop its NYC-inspired pilot collection, an aspect they say is a key component of the RugYourCity idea.

“Class rugs tell epic stories; the Nains from Persia, Herekes from Turkey, Agras from India herald these gilded eras., and their iconic motifs give them enduring style,” said Erin Eisinger, co-founder and CEO of Floorplan.  “We think it’s time modern rugs tell their stories of place.”

Since Kickstarter's funding, Floorplan has produced and shipped backers' rewards, while working with master weavers in India and Pakistan to transform the designs into actual rugs. After extensive collaboration, the prototypes have been finalized and full-sized rugs are in production. They're currently available for pre-order on floorplanrugs.com.

With the production of its NYC-inspired rugs underway, Floorplan is excited to launch RugYourCity's second Design Challenge, this time focusing on a city chosen by its Kickstarter backers: Los Angeles.

One of the key differences in this second challenge is that it will be open to the public. Anyone in the world — regardless of their experience designing rugs or their proximity to LA— is invited to participate. It will be a closed submission process and Floorplan will hand-pick a selection of designs (based on production viability) that will be shared with the public on its Facebook page, where creators can vote and lobby for "likes" on their designs; the 5 most popular will be produced as our next RugYourCity line.

So how does a design get on the short list? Floorplan says the key to a great RugYourCity design lies not just in its visual representation, but in the story behind it: What aspect of life or culture is it trying to capture about the city? And how does that translate to a massive textile on your floor? Beyond that:  1) It can be produced by today's weaving techniques 2) It tells a clear, compelling story and 3) It adheres to the contest's terms and conditions. 

"This is such a unique opportunity to collaborate with creative communities around the world — in cities big and small — not only to make rugs, but to communicate and commemorate what these places mean to us," said Mehmet Bozatli, Floorplan's co-founder.

Of course, creators of the selected designs not only have the satisfaction of seeing their design become a tactile artifact; winners will receive a 4'x6' rug of their design, PLUS 7% of any sales of their rug design sold on Floorplanrugs.com.

RugYourCity's LA Design Challenge is open for submissions June 15 - July 15, 2016. For more information, visit the challenge's official page.

About The NYC-Inspired Rug Your City Designers

See Rug Your City Bios Page

About The Founders

Erin + Mehmet crossed paths in New York City in the aughts. Erin was climbing the corporate ladder convincing financial institutions to implement user-centered design. Mehmet was running a wholesale rug business and finishing his master’s in architecture at Columbia.  When the urge for adventure struck in 2008, they moved to Istanbul and started FourByNorth Studios, a user-experience design and architectural consulting firm to serve both blue chip and the burgeoning startup companies in Turkey and Europe. After years of helping other businesses launch and refine brands, they applied their team’s expertise to a product that they know well but is elusive to the average consumer: good quality rugs at reasonable prices. Floorplan aims to cut through the noise of misleading markdowns and rugs that look good at first but shabby in short order.

About Floorplan

Floorplan is an agile rug company dedicated to improving the experience of finding and buying great rugs. It specializes in hand-made and vintage goods meant to last: hand-knotted, hand-loomed and hand-woven rugs in natural fibers like wool, cotton, silk and jute. Based in Los Angeles, CA, Floorplan has a retail space at Urban Americana in the Zaferia Design District of Long Beach, a designer-centered showroom in DTLA's LA Mart and is online at FloorplanRugs.com.