Karim Rashid

"Spiralik Blobs"

Karim Rashid is a leading figure in the fields of product, interior, fashion, furniture, lighting design and art. Born in Cairo, half Egyptian, half English, and raised in Canada, Karim now practices in New York. He is best known for bringing his democratic design sensibility to the masses. Designing for an impressive array of clients from Alessi to Dirt Devil, Umbra to Prada, Miyake to Method, Karim is radically changing the aesthetics of product design and the very nature of the consumer culture. He has had some 2500 objects put into production to date. His designs of the Morimoto restaurant in Philadelphia and the award-winning Semiramis Hotel in Athens have successfully expanded Karim's scope to include the realm of architecture and interior design. Karim was honored with the title of 2007 Cooper Hewitt National Design Awards Product Design Finalist, the 2006 Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design, the 2005 Honorary Doctorate from Corcoran College, the Sleep05 European Hotel Design Award, and the 2005 Pratt Legends Award. Karim has also won the prestigious I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review, Red Dot Design Award, and Chicago Athaneum Good Design Award numerous times throughout his career. His work is in the permanent collections of 14 Museums worldwide including MoMA and SFMoMA and he exhibits art in various galleries. Karim was an associate Professor of Industrial Design for 10 years and is now a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences globally. Karim has published his guide to living Design Your Self from Regan Books (2006), Digipop a digital exploration of computer graphics (Taschen, 2005), Karim Rashid: Compact Design Portfolio (Chronicle Books, 2004), as well two monographs titled Evolution (Universe, 2004) and I Want to Change the World (Rizzoli, 2001). He edited the International Design Yearbook 18 for Calmann and King (2003) and released two CD's on boutique label, Neverstop.

"Today poetic design is based on a plethora of complex criteria: human experience, social behaviors, global, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire for contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance, service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of these factors shape our objects, inform our forms, our physical space, visual culture and our contemporary human experience. These quantitative constructs shape business, identity, brand and value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty - it is after all a collective human need.

I believe that we could be living in an entirely different world - one that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds, spirits and experiences. Design has been the cultural shaper of our world from the start. We have designed systems, cities, and commodities. We have addressed the world's problems. Now design is not about solving problems, but about a rigorous beautification of our built environments. Design is about the betterment of our lives poetically, aesthetically, experientially, sensorially, and emotionally. My real desire is to see people live in the modus of our time, to participate in the contemporary world, and to release themselves from nostalgia, antiquated traditions, old rituals, kitsch and the meaningless. We should be conscious and attune with this world in this moment. If human nature is to live in the past - to change the world is to change human nature."