milan design week 2008 preview: karim rashid

vomit

john   02.05.08

i thought he stopped in 1999.

do you think he knows how irrelevant he is?

tommy   02.05.08

I hate this work, why it's published? ah! sorry, it's Karim Rashid...

SEETHISWAY   02.05.08

designboom
1. Is the chair comfortable?
2. Does it provide a mental distraction, humor?
3. Has he lost it [pictured]?

hosro   02.05.08

don't hate on Karim, hes out there succeeding, hes defined himself as a designer and perfected his style, not too many people can say that. regardless on your feelings about him, you should still have some respect; after all, he's the one being written about and you are the ones wasting time bitching about it. perhaps if you used your time more effectively and instead of complaining, you designed something amazing, you too would be published on designboom and beyond.

tarynpaper   02.06.08

Dudes, Karim is some great designer whether you like it or not. He draws magnifically and designs in a pretty neat way. Apparently the old saying of Tom Jobim about succeeding in Brazil fits with perfection elsewhere. He said : "In Brazil succeeding is a personal offense". Shoot, the guy was right!
MaRCo

MarcoVerdi   02.06.08

Succeeding or not, this work is poor by anyones standards.

odb   02.06.08

This chair looks like a scrotum.

css   02.06.08

the designboom team loves it !

birgit / designboom   02.06.08

This is high quality futuristic design. I love it!!! If you don't like it, please stick to the dull traditional furniture from the nearest shoppingmall. It's like the TV - if you don't like the program, just switch!!! You don't have to be disrespectful!

Norwegian astronaut   02.06.08

i hope the future doesnt look like karim rashid

mrfsrf   02.06.08

He is a definate 'Cult of personality' designer

see also Ross Lovegrove, Studio Job, Ron Arad..who else?

fish fingers   02.08.08

I agree with the scrotum post... I guess he relies in the materials and final look of it.

Alvmes   02.09.08

I think they look pretty cool.

Me   02.09.08

when's the design week 2008 gonna be?
and where?

Ofi.   02.09.08

aiiiiii karim !

robin cuervo   02.10.08

aiiiiii karim ! aiiiiiii

cristina borda   02.10.08

the other day i tried to figure out what was one product this planet really really needed that could make a difference and improvement and i just couldn't figure it out ... but Karim worked it out and the answer was a scrotum chair.

yay for Karim.

designs in a pretty neat way. oh please   02.11.08

wasn't life so much less complicated when artists just took a sh*t and called it art. now they have to use fibreglass and foam and and colour and stuff..... oh wait he is talking sh*t

if freedom were a form it would be a never-ending undulating boundless biomorphic shape [sh*t] that is in perpetual
motion. form follows fluid. in a post-industrial house our conditions [sh*t] will be more relaxed, softer and blobular,
where our experiences [sh*t] will be more hypertextual and less linear. the blobchair [sh*t] speaks to the new casualism
that is feeding our ever changing and shifting global lifestyles. blob architecture may shape our environments [sh*t];
organic systems will change our paradigms [sh*t], and organomics may shape the objects [sh*t] with touch everyday...'
KR

confused   02.11.08

ola

armand   02.14.08

I hope you have big homes, 'cause it occupies a lot of space and I really think that your clothes or anything else in the house doesn't fit inthere

cristina b   02.14.08

Re: Lovegrove, Rashid et al

Well I like Rashid's designs. I like something that has courage, form, and at least looks like it was the product of an active imagination. I think there's far too much disingenuous admiration and reverence for the kind of anally 'understated' nonsense turned out by charlatans like Jasper Morrison.

The trouble with the Morrison philosophy is that it tries to dress an absence of creativity as a commitment to minimalism. I believe Morrison’s obsession with function and his preference for excessive understatement conveniently plays to the limitations of his imagination, rather than the supposed virtue of a determination to fanatically refine to the bone.

No wonder he and Fukasawa chose to camouflage the bland paucity of their designs among everyday objects like corkscrews and egg boxes in the Super Normal exhibition.

Life is hard and joyless enough without developing a ‘size zero’ paranoia about anything that nourishes and delights the eyes.

Douglas Montgomery   02.14.08

i'm speechless about what i just seen..is this supposed to be a engenious design product? what's the main point of this so called chair? what is the concept behind this? from what i've just seen this is nothing else then a common, tasteless, inadequate product. There are so many good designers scattered around the world, and many of then participate in the designboom competitions with amazing and suprising work, why not give those people the oportunity instead of these so called designers?

nuno-bernardo   02.21.08

It need more design

curtison   02.22.08

are these-a chairs, they look like male organs to me.

t-pain   02.24.08

could it be it? colored caps for male organs?

chupadorae   02.24.08

hmmm....

i would say that this is defenetly not one of the best design works that karim can do :)

...just some lack of inspiration and not such a fine day in his paradise...the chair..is the reflection of it :)

ilinka   02.26.08

A very enjoyable read of comments. However, Karim isn't even worth the effort of typing. The most interesting point is by Douglas Montgomery. Nice to hear a bit of chiding opinion on the Morrison/Fukasawa front. You might have a point on some individual products, but read Fukasawa's latest book (if you haven't already). For me it is probably the most important recent design book i have read. See past the physical object to the depth, insight and maturity to his entire approach.

The problem with fans of form monkeys like Rashid and Captain Birdseye Lovegroove et al is they rarely talk about anything other than what an object looks like or, unbelievably, how expensive it is. I'm referring to a dealer of Hadid's latest mild aluminum table that was milled from a solid block instead of being more efficiently cast. Apparently using a wasteful and extremely expensive technique "was the whole point". The only use of this type of design is to sell it to rich idiots who will hope to simultaneously screw their secretary's and snort cocaine off of it.

Pants   02.26.08

Kreamy Rash has done it again... can't wait to for the accompanying vagina shaped table...

Alex   03.07.08

We have to look beyond the surface to what these objects say about their designers. The age-old arguments - flamboyance vs restraint, conspicuous vs inconspicuous consumption, building upon lessons from the past vs embodying an abstract vision of the future - reveal a personal outlook. Both have their place. Rashid is a formalist (excitement at the creation of form appears to override other concerns such as lightness, economical use of materials, pricing for widespead availablility). His forms either engage or repel but they are the outcome of his ideology - one of encouraging us to live only with contemporary products. Do we really want to discard every object from the past and all the memories and associations they embody? It is this dangerous thinking rather than the shapes we should be criticising.

anonymous   03.15.08

these chairs are for an art exhibition and were made for collectors of design art in limited edition because a lot of people will buy them, like em or hate em they are a unique shape for a chair i havent seen, for those who just dont like it thats understandable but all you douches the positive karim lovers who like everything he does regardless (hardly anyone has 100% good designs and if they do they are not affordable on a designers salary, like try buying a bourelec or dixon piece for under 500, well then again maybe grchic, but he does a lot less projects a year so he can spend more time on them) and all the negative ignorant karim hater folks who dont like any of his designs because they are narrow minded should check out his new work at the fair or just go to walmart or target and check it out, you dont see many other designers making such a unique variety of products like karim does hes one of the most important american designers ever, try to think of the last time an american designer has made such an impact...its been 50 years.

chris   04.14.08