By Jeanne Beker
Photography by Yiorgos Kaplanidis @thisisnotanotheragency
Semiramis Hotel, Athens, Greece
Three decades ago, a brilliant but rather penniless young visionary moved to New York from Toronto, wondering how he was going to make a design career for himself. Today, Karim Rashid is perhaps the most famous industrial designer in North America and beyond — one who not only always had a strong sense of what’s ahead, but one who continually contributes to the world’s cultural zeitgeist, creating a wonderland of products, places and spaces that are as useful as they are awe-inspiring. It seems design was always in the cards for Karim. As a child, the Cairo native was fascinated by the shapes of functional objects, and even spent time drawing the trunks and suitcases he saw on the ship his family boarded when they emigrated from Egypt to Montreal in 1966. The Rashids ended up in Mississauga, Ont., where Karim’s keen aesthetic eye was nurtured by his family, and by the time his high-school graduation rolled around, he had created a pink satin suit for himself to sport for The monumental occasion. “I was brought up with beautiful objects in our home and my father and mother were not well off,” Karim says. “My father worked at the CBC, but he was a painter and didn’t make much money. But he had impeccable — and I hate the word taste — but he had impeccable ‘feelings’ about the things he brought home, including beautiful objects, like a clock radio he bought me that I kept beside my bed. Or a lamp he bought me, which was a big plastic dome. This was the late-1960s, and the lamp was bright yellow and orange.” These colourful, plastic, mid-century objects made Karim realize the value of democratic design. “Meaning,” he explains, “that as much as we talk bad about polymers and plastics, we wouldn’t have all these things if it wasn’t for plastics. It’s a way to make an inexpensive product that’s accessible to a majority.”
After studying industrial design at Ottawa’s Carleton University, Karim took off for Italy and spent time working in Naples before interning at a design studio in Milan. Then it was back to Toronto, where he worked for seven years creating useful objects like a snow shovel for Black+Decker, X-ray equipment for Picker International, post boxes for Canada Post and other projects at Kuypers Adamson Norton. He later started his own industrial design firm called “Babel.” But back in those days, Toronto wasn’t filled with the hope and inspiration it has today, and Karim’s frustrations grew. “Working in Milan was so different, and I missed that,” he reminisces. “The amount of inspiration on a single day in the Italian lab was amazing.” Later, he started teaching interior and furniture design classes at OCAD and the University of Toronto and applied for a teaching job stateside. To his great surprise, the 32-year-old got a three-year contract to be an assistant professor at the Rhode Island School of Design. But his academic aspirations were short-lived: After only a year, he was let go. “They told me I was teaching theory and philosophy. I wasn’t teaching design. And I was devastated,” Karim recalls. “It really was a craft school, and I wasn’t doing craft. I was doing industrial design. It’s very different. There were also politics to deal with. So, I got fired. I didn’t know what to do and I went to my ATM and I had $1,300. I asked myself, do I go back to Toronto, or should I just take a stab at New York?”
Karim’s architect brother was living in New York, and doing quite well, so the disillusioned designer took off for the Big Apple, even though he felt it wasn’t really a design center. But it was a hotbed for art and commerce. “What I realized,” says Karim, “is that New York was a good place to be, not because I was getting work locally, but because everyone in the world comes to New York — all the international companies I was working with would come to NY to visit me at my office, or companies from France, Sweden or Japan. It was a good city to be in at that time to start my career.” The incomparable buzz of Manhattan also helped fuel Karim’s creative fires. He realized he could get strong international exposure if he was based in New York. “Back then, it seemed like I had little choice and I wanted to build a career.”
HE REALIZED THE POWER OF DESIGN, AND KNOWING HOW MUCH PEOPLE APPRECIATED BEAUTIFUL, FUNCTIONAL THINGS.
On a trip back to Toronto to see his parents in 1994, Karim decided to visit the home accessories design and manufacturing company, Umbra, and pitch an idea for a simple polypropylene trash can called the “Garbino” — a name inspired by Greta Garbo — with flowing curves and negative spaces. “Paul Rowan at Umbra suggested it would be a good product to work on. I’d learned all about working with polymers, and the kinds of polymers that were safe for the world. And I knew the additives that could be put into polymers to make amazing translucency or colors,” says Karim. “My university education had given me a very solid engineering approach — studying how to design good electric kettles and good toasters, understanding the different plastics and the parts and end cycle of the product and recycling the product.” Karim, with his sharp artistic eye and his technical proficiency in creating strong industrial design, was perfectly poised to dream up an object that was so striking, so beautiful and so practical, that the Garbino trash can became a phenomenal success. To date, 20 million Garbinos have been sold, and the award-winning design is on permanent display at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The legendary product, which is still as popular today as ever, was emblematic of so much to Karim. “There were objects in our homes that we never even thought about, and I knew that with industrial design and doing something beautiful, you can build on it and you can bring some sort of meaning or some sort of pleasure to your life. And not just on a visual level, because the Garbino was exceptionally functional as well, with its strategically placed handles.”
Witnessing the success of that humble plastic wastebasket provided an a-ha moment for Karim. He realized the power of design. And knowing how much people appreciated beautiful, functional things, his personal design philosophy really gelled for him. “Design is about shaping a better life, period,” he states with passion. “You make a chair — it should be super comfortable. Maybe it’s light to pick up. Maybe it’s easy to move. Maybe it doesn’t make noise when it moves and you can ship it very easily around the world. Those are the things a lot of people don’t know is design, because their interpretation of design is just style. But it’s about building a better world for people.”
The impact of Karim’s design vision can be felt globally: He’s one of the world’s most prolific designers, with more than 4,000 designs in production in more than 40 countries. (He also has a happy home life — he has a 10-year-old daughter named Kiva and he’s engaged to a Persian fashion designer; they’re planning to marry next year in the US. He’s been married twice before — first to an American artist, then to a Serbian scientist.) From hotel, restaurant and private residence interiors, to exhibits, packaging, graphic and branding direction, and even fashion initiatives, his aim is to creatively touch every aspect of our physical and virtual landscape. It goes without saying that Karim’s success has had a lot to do with strong aesthetic appeal. And his aesthetic sense has always smacked of a kind of modernity, with a futuristic vibe that seems to transport us to another time and place. “Because I was brought up with this notion of trying to find new language, a new vernacular,” he reflects, “and also to provoke, you know — inspire, and provoke. It’s like when you go to a hotel lobby, and you go ‘wow!’ That’s the sort of provocation I love. So, my work is quite extroverted that way. It’s about embracing the time we live in. A lot of people say my work is futuristic, but it’s not really, because it exists now.”
But, as inspiring as Karim’s designs are, when it comes to products you have to ask — how much “stuff” do we really need in our lives these days? This age of excess certainly hasn’t done much for the sustainability cause. It’s a hot topic, and one that Karim doesn’t shy away from. “It’s a valid question,” he reasons. “I was giving a lecture a few days ago in Brazil, and I was talking about stopping manufacturing all things for 30 years. There’s more than enough housing, cars, products, things in the world that we could be consuming already. We have more than enough stuff, right? So, what can designers do? We can bring something better or more comfortable or smarter, or we can use materials that are more ecological. It’s not really the fault of designers that there’s a lot of stuff in the world.” Karim gives the example of the “Oh Chair” he created. Sturdy yet flexible, it’s a stackable chair that can be used both indoors and out. “That chair is so successful,” says Karim. “It was bringing Umbra so much money that they didn’t need to produce many other products. By putting a good product on the market, it reduces poorly designed product, and I call that ‘addition by subtraction.’”
No matter which smart products Karim is conceptualizing at any given time, he’s wildly busy, working often virtually now and mostly from his office in New York. He shut down his other global office locations during the pandemic, realizing one can work from just about anywhere these days. (He has a team of up to 10 international freelancers around the world.) Considering the incredible diversity of projects on his agenda, I ask Karim what type of project brings him the most joy. Interestingly, he tells me it was designing a piece of jewelry for an exhibition in Cairo. “Someone said to me, ‘You’re so excited about designing a ring?’ Yes, I was really excited,” he laughs. “So, I realized that whether it’s micro, like designing a ring, or macro, like designing a building, if I can contribute something original, I’m thrilled. It’s not about the scale and it’s not about the typology. It’s just the opportunity that allows me to show the world something interesting and original.”
Still, Karim admits that being a total design original is something that’s becoming increasingly challenging today. And with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), some creatives feel as if they’re at risk of becoming a dying breed. “It’s a very weird profession because you see so much of the same thing all over the world, especially in interior design — the same type of bars, cafés, hotels. These are supposed to be creative people who are doing these projects. But, of course, there are a lot of things working against you. There’s the developer or the marketing team or somebody saying, ‘Oh, but we want the hotel to look like this hotel. We want to be competitive.’ So, it’s like a salmon swimming upstream, to keep pushing to do something you’re proud of that’s original. And I’ve had this obsession since I was a child, I always felt I’m on this Earth for a certain amount of time. And I’m creative and capable of original vision, and that’s what I’m going to pursue. And even now, the minute I do something that I know is a little bit banal, I feel either guilty or I decide that I don’t want to put it in production. I tell the company, ‘No, no, no, we’re not going to end up doing this. Try something else!’ Because especially at the time we live in now, we’re becoming forced to do status quo. All the great professions are dying and changing very quickly. It started with photography and then it went to interior decorating with social media. It’s taking the creativity out of creators.”
While Karim is understandably dismayed that originality is being undermined by AI, he does agree that the possibilities for good are dizzying. “AI is just beginning and it’s phenomenal. But it’s out of control, and inevitably, our profession will disappear unless, somehow, you still have a higher contribution.” Exactly what that contribution will be for Karim remains to be seen. But unquestionably, it will have a lot to do with making this world not only a more provocatively beautiful place, but a truly better one at that.
