Objectified (2009)

Karim Rashid: Self - Designer (New York)

Quotes 

• Karim Rashid - Designer : [...]  Am I playing a game to show that I can differentiate

  [myself from other designers] 

  Karim Rashid - Designer : ? Or am I actually really doing something that is contributive? Because the big issue with design is: are the things we are doing really making an effect and making change? 78% of the world is completely impractical; 78% of the world is uncomfortable. You feel it. You know, you feel that hotel rooms are poorly designed, you sit in chairs that are very uncomfortable and it's crazy. You imagine, if you design a million chairs to date, or how many chairs have been done in the world, why on Earth would we have an uncomfortable chair? There's like no excuse, whatsoever.

• Karim Rashid - Designer : We have advanced technologically so far and yet somehow, it's almost some sort of paranoia where we're afraid to really say 'we live in the third technological revolution.' I have an iPod in my pocket, I have a mobile phone, I have a laptop, but then somehow, I end up going home and sitting on wood-spindle, Wittengale-like chairs. So, in a way, you could argue that we're building all these kind-of really kitsch stage-sets that have absolutely nothing to do with the age in which we live in.

  [...] 

  Karim Rashid - Designer : It'd be like, imagine right now, I'm sitting at my laptop, and I say 'oh, I've got to go out', what am I going to do? Go out and get my horse and carriage? No, of course not.

• Karim Rashid - Designer : If the shelf life of a high-tech object is less than eleven months, it should be all 100% disposable. You know, I think my laptop, in a way, should be made of cardboard or my mobile phone could be a piece of cardboard or it could be just made out of something like, I don't know, sugar cane or some bio-plastic, etc. Why on Earth does anything have to be built to be permanent?