- One of your mottos is to strive for the luxury of freedom instead of the luxury of the material world. At the same time, you are a very famous person, you are in incredible demand, and you, among other things, are developing designs for fashionable five-star hotels. How does this fit with the concept of “luxury of freedom”?
“You are a little mistaken here.” I mainly work with more affordable hotels - two or three stars. If my memory serves me, about seven years ago I worked with a German two-star hotel. In general, the stars are not important here. A night in that hotel costs € 39.
- In fact, this is a hostel level.
- Almost, but with private rooms and excellent design - very comfortable, relaxed, practical. This hotel is beautiful. In a way, I proved to the world that money is not the main thing in this case. Many developers and people generally believe that design always involves a large budget.
Design has long been perceived as part of an elitist culture or high art.
However, this is not at all true. The Industrial Revolution taught us that design should be present in consumer goods and be affordable.
- Speaking about your designs in general, how much does it cost? You are absolutely right: designer objects, whether furniture or something else, are perceived as a work of art, as part of an elite culture. This may not be accessible to everyone.
- True, but the situation has changed. An excellent example of changes in the world of design is what happened in the world of fashion. Many luxury brands face difficulties, not only financially, but also conceptually. Most do not even know which direction to move on. Although if you go back 30-40 years ago, then every fashion house had its own spirit, style and its own unique concept. Each had an individuality.
Say, Chanel was very different from Gucci, and Gucci, in turn, was from Prada. Today, the difference is blurred as everyone follows the trends. This is partly due to the fact that we live in the digital age. But they seem to run out of ideas and no longer have their own vision.
The only thing that allows them to remain competitive is the name. Every time I am amazed when I leaf through a magazine and see an advertisement for women's sports trousers with a large strip on the side, on which is written Moschino or Prada. The only difference nowadays is the brand name.
The same thing is starting to happen in design. In the fashion world, luxury brands are competing with H&M, Mango and other mass markets, which have great opportunities and, in fact, open up access to fashion for ordinary consumers.
And in the design world, these are stores like IKEA, which show people that a beautiful modern sofa can be ten times cheaper than a luxury sofa. It is more accessible. I think it's great. I always believed in what I call design democracy - a democratic design that is accessible to most people and allows us to live better. This began with the digital age. The other day I read that now around the world use smartphones and a half billion people.
- What do you mean by “luxury of freedom”?
- For hundreds of thousands of years of our history - so to speak, in the analogue era - material things defined luxury: precious stones, expensive materials, some kind of skillful products. 40 years ago, to assemble a Rolls-Royce, it took 40 people and three months of work. Today, everything is automated. It is assembled in the same way as a regular Nissan.
The concept of luxury has come to be rethought. But, unlike the analogue age, in the digital age, luxury is determined by the possibility of unhindered communication. The world is becoming one.
- Karim Rashid
- RT
The luxury is to have a thousand friends all over the planet or work in 45 countries at the same time, as I am now. Just imagine how much Frank Lloyd Wright (American architect. - RT ), Le Corbusier (French architect. - RT ) or Pablo Picasso could have done if they were alive. They were fertile in their time, but today there are much more opportunities for this. Here they are, new forms of luxury!
For the past few years, I have been wondering: what is luxury specifically for me? And I came to the conclusion that this is free time. Most people are so busy at work that it becomes a real luxury for us that rare time when we can be alone with ourselves, with those we love, with family; a time when we can meditate, exercise, do some personal affairs.
I have a second definition of luxury: you are in this world in order to do the things for which it was created. Then you lead a luxurious life.
In other words, if you can get down to business with a passion, then a more luxurious life is hard to imagine.
“You say that people should not seek inspiration in the past, and that you should not be nostalgic.” But a lot of new things came about thanks to a rethinking of the old. The basis for neoclassicism was the ancient culture, and for steampunk - the Victorian era. Why forget everything that happened in the past, if you can use it to create something beautiful - now or in the future?
- The question is, is it beauty or some kind of fleeting flash, a trend. When we call something “beautiful”, for us it is not only an aesthetic look, but a feeling, an emotional response.
You can probably draw inspiration from the past and rethink it creatively, creating something interesting and beautiful, but in fact I don’t really believe in it. And here's why: such a process is similar to creating remixes. I have been performing as a DJ for 40 years and listened to so many songs that I understand from which melody any track originates. And this initial composition is enough for me - it is not at all necessary to process it in a new way.
Designers, people of creativity set themselves the goal of creating something new and unusual, to serve the progress and evolution of mankind, in a sense, to change the world for the better.
Therefore, no matter what project I undertake, it is very important for me that it be a reflection of my time, and not an imitation of someone else's style. This is the danger.
The problem of mankind is this: we live in fear. And most of all we are now afraid of how incredible and alluring the digital age will be. Therefore, we cling to what, in our opinion, provides a certain security, - to the past.
- We have the opportunity to go anywhere and even travel around the world without any luggage - just fingerprints. But there is always a person who wants to follow all this and control you. Do not you think that such a risk exists, everything will be controlled by the "big brother"?
- Let's look at it from a different angle. In the past, about 2% of the world's people were rich, and the remaining 98% were poor. In recent times, the middle class has appeared, and today it includes one third of the world's population.
The central role in our civilization has always been played by the aspect of mass character, one might even say, the suppression of the masses - under the rule of the pharaohs and kings, and then politicians. They oppressed the majority. Even creative people were expelled, executed, or branded as “anarchists”. They were all considered cranks. Nevertheless, the masses had to be controlled, which was what happened throughout history.
Today we are on the verge of a digital age and are worried about the existence of a "big brother." But in fact, if you are a decent citizen, a good person, you have nothing to hide. What difference does anyone know about your existence?
The most favorable of the possible consequences of this development may be that the manifestations of venality, greed, violence, and everything “not entirely legal” will be in sight.
I have a theory that I call the "century of transparency." This era is coming. What do I mean by transparency? In Shanghai, I stay in a hotel room located on the 98th floor of the building, and only glass separates me from the metropolis. I can lean against him - and now, everything is in sight. This is transparency - on the physical, metaphysical and spiritual levels. We are moving towards an era of genuine honesty.
Anyone is able to influence in terms of creativity - we can extend our "I", our existence to others. In addition, in the digital age, we are all free. There are no borders, no restrictions. And we are all equal.
“Then why are more walls being built now than ever before?”
- Did you know that over the past 40 years there have been about 32 new countries? Why? It's all about fear. In our digital age without borders and barriers, people become nationalists and patriots, because they are afraid of losing something important. They become more fanatical, like religion. Borders are closing. But this is temporary. In my opinion, we are currently experiencing a very turbulent period. An abyss has opened up, on one side of which - 100 thousand years of analog information, and on the other - 40 years of digital. It's only begining.
- One of Karim Rashid's projects
- © karimrashid.com
My daughter is now six and a half. The average person is able to live up to 120 years. Perhaps she will still catch these changes. I know what will happen to our world in the future.
Now people are confused, they are scared. But when the generation that still controls politics around the world dies, children who have grown up in the conditions of a new freedom will come to power. They are much less interested in material objects, they just do not care. They don’t even need cars. They want to live near their place of work and ride a bicycle. And this trend can be observed everywhere. The world is simply obliged to move in this direction. Change is inevitable.
- Will people really lose the desire to possess physical objects?
- Of course no.
- I like to read paper books, smell them. It's priceless. No application on a smartphone can ever replace this.
- I recently worked on a smartphone design for Oppo. Work took me two years. The phone was on sale for only eight months. The other day I went to the Oppo store to look at the phone, and saw that it was already gone. It is replaced by another model. I agree that everything is changing too rapidly.
So I agree with you, because I deal with physical objects too. I am not at all an ardent fan of everything virtual and do not dream of living in a cosmic vacuum. I like the material world.
I like to touch things, smell them, texture, hear the sounds they make. I like to use all the senses. When I work on the design of the hotel, I care about what it will smell like and what kind of music will sound.
I take all this into account. Like all of us, I love physical contact. We love to touch each other and smell the other person. Nothing beats the feeling of holding someone in your arms. It is in our nature, right?
But speaking of history, I can easily go to the Cairo Museum, there are folding chairs three thousand years ago - just beautiful. This is a real relic, and we must save them. What we should not do is endlessly copy them, because they have already lost their relevance. When you work on a design, you create it taking into account modern conditions in order to shape the future.
I design, so to say, “glass boxes”, because modern technologies allow this. Perhaps in 30-50 years we will have more advanced technologies and something new will appear. Such is progress, such is the evolution of mankind. This does not mean that we do not need to preserve some of these brick buildings if they are beautiful and symbolize their era. For example, in London there are buildings of the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth centuries in perfect condition ...
“ Does this mean that the London red telephone boxes will be replaced in the future by others, and we will never see them again?”
“No, but such a booth can be placed in a museum or gallery.” We can read about them. We can find out their story. Even if the books you talked about someday stop printing, they will remain. For us it will be something akin to sculpture, a work of art, something that can be hung on the wall.
Take the great-grandmother's ring on the finger. A wonderful thing, referring to traditions, history, culture. But there is no need to create a fake for such a ring. That is the whole problem. There is too much of the world that can be described with the German word kitsch.
And by default, this is a cheap imitation of the original. But why is such a thing needed? Let the original remain a beautiful original.
- Do you like working with plastic. And you call it a very malleable material of the future.
- It is democratic, and inexpensive things can be made from it.
- But now people prefer glass bottles to plastic bottles, paper bags and want everything from wood, not plastic. Then why do you still believe in this stuff? What attracts you to it?
- Here you need a little excursion into my biography. When I was designing in the early 1980s, I needed to take plastic base.
We owe a lot to this material. Over the past 150 years, plastic has changed the world. But at the same time, we did not know much about him. It was too young material for us to realize ...
- The threat of pollution?
- Yes. What its use will lead to. Pollution, toxicity and the like. Then we did not know anything about this, but now we have accumulated a fairly extensive knowledge base. In addition, there are polymers that allow you to do incredible things, and they can be processed endlessly.
Recently, I used polyethylene made from sugarcane. Conventional polyethylene is produced from petroleum, and this requires seven steps. The “green” material is made in three stages: ethanol is obtained from sugar cane, and polyethylene is ultimately obtained from it.
- One of Karim Rashid's projects
- © karimrashid.com
We do not need sugar - this is not a food source and in general it leads to diabetes, obesity, heart attacks. Even 240 years ago we did not eat sugar, but ate fruits and vegetables. So it’s great that now you can synthesize plastic from it.
Just think about life in the modern world. 70 or 80% of what you see in hospitals is made of polymer materials. An artificial heart is plastic. Or contact lenses. The list goes on and on. Plastic plays a huge role in our life, it has changed humanity.
The problem is that we did not know which plastic was “good” and which was “bad”. We did not think to make it biodegradable. Now in my works I use a lot of just such plastic. The famous bin, which appeared a quarter century ago and has since been sold in the amount of approximately fifteen million copies, is now finally made from biodegradable polymers.
Companies producing such products began to actively develop such materials only 15 years ago. And even now, the cost of good polymers that do not pollute the planet, significantly exceeds the price of polymers synthesized from oil. When the cost drops, it will resemble the choice between organic milk and regular. The smaller the difference in price, the more companies will use biodegradable polymers, although, of course, they must use them anyway and this must be made mandatory.
So we will still have wonderful plastic household items with soft forms that will remain affordable and cheap, but only they will all become biodegradable. And this will happen in the next twenty years.
- That is, all this newfound popularity of glass, paper and wood is just fashion?
- Not at all. This is a necessity due to a number of reasons. Many of the polymers we have created emit toxic substances and pose a certain danger. This applies even to chipboard used in the manufacture of furniture. The connecting element in it is glue, and it is not only toxic, but also evaporates in your home.
People who buy collapsible furniture of various manufacturers live in an environment of toxic substances. The polyurethane used in carpets and many pieces of furniture releases toxic substances. And here is the result: the growth rate of cancer incidence began to increase. In America, one in three people is ill with cancer, in Western Europe - one in four. This is crazy. One hundred years ago in the United States it was only about every three hundred. There is clearly something wrong here.
All of these polymers pose a serious danger. It was necessary to return to the glass so as not to drink from plastic bottles. Wherever I go, the situation is depressing. Plastic bottles are everywhere. It was nice to swallow water from a paper cup. Many companies and many truly talented people are actively working to change the poisoned world that we created.
See the full version of the interview on the RTD website.