Karim Rashid | ‘We’re going back to designocracy’

Karim Rashid | ‘We’re going back to designocracy’

For the world’s most prolific designer, the ultimate luxury is a world without door handles

 

For a people addicted to plastic water bottles, Karim Rashid tapped into American behaviour and came up with a $10 (around Rs. 490 now) water bottle that comes with a carbon filter. Available in six popsicle-bright colours, the Water Bobble, one of his most recent creations, filters chlorine and contaminants from water.

That’s 3,500 designs and counting. At 52, Rashid is the world’s most prolific designer.

Seamless world: Rashid says he dreams of a ‘casual age’ where beautiful objects will make life easier. Photographs courtesy Karim Rashid

For the India Design Forum earlier this month, dressed in signature white and pink, he put up a spirited show on the power of design. He has the body language of a new-age guru. His talk—the most well-attended in the forum—began with the change in the design industry from designing for mass production to elitism to going back to a “designocracy”, as we are beginning to witness now.

 

While some might disagree with his singular vision of moving forward to a world of original design by shunning all that is nostalgic, Rashid is open in his criticism of sentimental design. He speaks of his recent visit to a restaurant in the hipster outbacks of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, US. “When their food was so inventive, I was wondering why I was sitting in a poor imitation of a 16th century European chair!” At the other end of the spectrum is a San Francisco hotel where a simple pocket device with a microchip does all the work: from paying for your restaurant bill to opening your room’s door. This features high on his “like” list.

For Rashid, the ultimate luxury is a world without door handles—a seamlessly designed world. “I dream of a ‘casual age’ where beautiful objects make our lives simpler,” he says, evoking the philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who’d called all objects obstacles in our experience of the world. “Let’s face it. We’re living in a poorly designed world.”

Rashid’s designs span interiors, fashion, furniture, lighting, installations and art. His work is displayed across museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. His work profile is eclectic: from designing for the high-end Italian lighting brand Artemide and the Morimoto restaurant in Philadelphia to luxury goods for Veuve Clicquot, Swarovski and Kenzo. A few years ago, Rashid created the ultimate in bathing luxury: an all-in-one TV-tub unit for Korean company Saturn Bath. Made with liquid acrylic resin, the sleek bathtub comes fitted with a waterproof LCD screen which allows you to watch television and DVDs, listen to MP3 format music and surf the Internet.

Rashid’s products have striking names—from the Orgy Sofa to the Oh Chair. “That’s part of the design,” he says.

Nienkamper, 2005: Rashid’s answer to a world that is evolving to more organic, softer and fluid forms. From the Kloud Collection, this chair is made with wood, steel and foam.

Indeed, everything is “part of the design”—from the faucets in the hotel we’re sitting in to his own pink shoes. “Why on earth are their fittings from Italian and German luxury brands when I’m sure there are people in India who can manufacture a ceramic basin?” he asks, before answering himself. “This place is concerned more with style than experience. Luxury is an experience.”

Rashid spoke to us about his idea of luxury in design, his personal design symbols and the originality of the Tata Nano. Edited excerpts:

You have lectured and written extensively about the power of design. What sort of power does design wield?

Nearco suspension lamp by Artemide, 2011: A mirror-finish pendant lamp made with moulded polyethylene for Italian designer lighting manufacturer Artemide.

Contemporary design has the power to shape the future. I believe that good design is extremely consequential to our daily lives and can positively change human behaviour and popular imagination. One must remember that design has evolved over the years based on a plethora of complex criteria—human experience; social, global, economic and political issues; physical and mental interaction, form, vision and a rigorous understanding of contemporary culture.

You’ve written a book called ‘I Want to Change the World’. What is your vision of this changed world?
My inspiration, drive and agenda are still the same as when I wrote I Want to Change the World in 2001. I want to contribute objects to our physical landscape that inspire, engage and encourage positive experiences. The role of a designer today is to make the world a better place by influencing our everyday behaviour, functionally and emotionally. By replacing the clutter of poorly designed and poorly made objects with beautiful, luxurious high-performing objects—hopefully sustainable, ergonomic, well-made, sensible yet seductive objects—we reduce the stress in our environments and in everyday life.

Tell us about the design symbols that have become so recognizable—on your website, your work, your skin. Are they your design building blocks or design atoms?
The icons came about in the 1980s as frustration for not getting credit on products that I designed. In retaliation, I started marking the products with a small cross, then eventually an asterisk, and then a figure 8. Now I have 54 symbols that make for a language. I think that somehow these symbols just grew out of me, it was a visceral process. But now I see the connection so strongly. In fact, many people look at my arms and ask me if my tattoos are Egyptian. Strange how we have all this in our DNA.

You are one of the most prolific designers of recent times. What keeps you going?

Veuve Clicquot Love Seat, 2006: A bright pink love seat with joined chairs facing each other and an ice bucket in the signature Clicquot yellow in the middle.

The world cannot keep up with my speed. I conceive more ideas than my clients can produce. This year, I have developed about 230 projects so far. Of those, maybe 100 will get to the market. My clients cannot work fast enough, produce enough concepts, turn around manufacturing fast enough. Typically clients come to me with a brief and I design for them but I frequently already have designs in mind for that product or typology. My discipline is to absorb everything I can about a particular subject, and then I sketch for hours developing ideas. I study the criteria, the brief, and in turn, I follow my axiom, “form follows subject”.

What is your opinion on the Indian design style (from local textiles, handicrafts to architecture). Is there something you identify as Indian design?
This is my second visit, I came for the first time several years ago. I love India for being the most colourful place in the world. Poetry, beauty, love and respect for human existence are essential elements of Indian design.

Name a few contemporary Indian products that are iconic.
I can name one: the Tata Nano! All my life I wanted to make an inexpensive, democratic car but I didn’t have the capital or the means to do it. The Nano is smart, it’s original.

You’ve worked across the spectrum from industrial products to home interiors to fashion. What is closest to your heart?

Candy-coloured future: Rashid’s designs for an apartment in MyBrickell, a new urban condo residency in Brickell, Miami, Florida.

I love designing it all. But my best designs function both as sculptural and functional objects. They are sculptures to be used. Dirt Devil’s Kone, for instance, is the first cordless, hand-held vacuum cleaner to put out in your living room on display as an object, like a vase. In a product typology such as a salt and pepper mill where it holds the place on a table where a centrepiece or flower arrangement might be, it should also be a sculpture in its own right, which is why we also used strictly black, white and metal finishes. Everything should be designed to be displayed. That’s luxury to me.

Are you suggesting that functional design is superior to design wholly geared to aesthetics?
Well, this is the business of beauty. One’s definition of beauty is important to answer that question: To me, if a product is holistic, if it fulfils its purpose, it is also beautiful. So the two concerns cannot be separated.

You were born in Cairo, raised in England and Canada, and educated in Italy. You set up your studio in New York. How have these cities and their ethos inspired you?

MyBrickell’s gym area. 

I love New York because it is so free and yet so expensive, Milano because it is so hyper emotional and bourgeois, London because it is so eclectic and eccentric, Toronto because it is my little crab apple, Cairo because it is my pyramidal birthplace, Belgrade because the culture, the people, the food, the intellect is very vibrant and Amsterdam because it’s my European office away from home.

In your spare time, you engage with art and music...how do these engagements weave into your fabric as a cutting-edge designer?
Music affords me to concentrate, be inspired, dream and imagine. I always wanted to be a musician but had no talent. It is probably why I ended up playing other people’s music as a deejay. My strength is in finding interesting and unconventional music. I also cannot sing, and I wish I could, so I am drawn towards beautiful voices like Bryan Ferry, David Bowie, Antony Hegarty and others.