Prince with a plastic design

More artist than designer, Karim Rashid believes in making his works democratic and accessible to all.

Any talk on interiors, art and design would be incomplete without a mention of what is, perhaps, the biggest event to hit the industry.

Dubai, in the throes of booming development, was just the right venue for the International Design Forum (IDF), a three-day event held last month that could not have happened at a more opportune moment. Based on the belief that design improves lives, its aim was to determine how the challenges faced by the Arab world might be met by brand new design solutions.

The IDF integrates the Arab perspective into the international design calendar as the first real design celebration of the Arab world.

The event brought together the who's who of the global design arena to tackle the design challenges of the future.

Among the luminaries was Karim Rashid, considered one of the stars of the interiors world. With his trademark funky white glasses and his many tattoos, Rashid features among the pantheon of today's design deities. He has a multicultural identity - born of Egyptian and English parents in Cairo, raised in Canada and now practising in New York.

Pocket-wise artist

To date, Rashid has made more than 2,000 objects and has effectively entered the realm of architecture and interiors. He has designed the Morimoto restaurant in Philadelphia and Semiramis hotel in Athens. His work is in the permanent collection of 14 museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Rashid, who used to be an associate professor of industrial design for 10 years, is now often a guest lecturer at universities and conferences worldwide.

Rashid has made an effort not to be snobbish and has always taken a democratic approach to design, suggesting that high-quality design should be accessible to the light-pocketed as well. He believes that his lines are not just limited to a few people; he wants everyone who understands good design to have access to it.

His designs have been courted by the likes of Alessi, Georg Jensen, Umbra, Prada, Miyake and Method. Rashid has also made headway in his ambition of trying to change the nature of consumer culture by changing the aesthetics of product design.

Physically, his approach to design can be described as functional and holistic, aiming for the most simple, elegant shape that will effectively and ergonomically meet the requirements of an object's purpose. He has reinterpreted objects to a whole new generation with roots in today's techno-culture. Most well known for his Garbo Garbage Can, The Oh chair and The Bozart Chess set, Karim Rashid has designed hundreds of art objects as well as left his imprint on furniture, lighting, fashion, restaurants and hotels. In the July 2, 2001 issue of Time, he was dubbed "the poet of plastic".

Master of minimalism

Equally adept at turning his hand to vases, tables, wristwatches, glassware, salt and pepper shakers as he

is to prints and interiors, once when Rashid was asked to describe his approach to design, he called it "sensual minimalism" or "sensualism". He explained how one concentrates on the subject matter of the object rather than on the form of the object and through that, as there is less adornment, it becomes relatively minimal. He sees his designs as being fluid, soft, organic and human.

Rashid is also the author of a book, I want to change the world. It's a big world. In interviews, he has said he used the title for various reasons: "I think every designer always wants to contribute something to culture. So I admitted it. I have always been obsessed with doing this. Even as a four-year-old child, I used to draw pictures of a church with my father, but I always wanted to change something: the windows …

Something original

"I consider myself more of an artist than a hard-core industrial designer, because there's this weird drive internally to do something original in the world. The other definition is because there was this Utopian vision that architects in the 20th century had - they only saw the world one way.

"So, in the book, there is an article about how we live in a very complex world and it can never be a Utopian, singular vision. I would never want to mandate my vision on everyone else. I'm just contributing to a lot of sensibilities."

While changing the world entirely might take a little longer to achieve, Rashid definitely has trod on design ground hitherto not covered by any design maverick. Single-handedly, Rashid has brought credibility to "much hated" plastic, among other materials, making it the must-have component of modern consumer culture.

The Karim Rashid show is being held at the Courtyard Gallery until June 20 will give Dubai a taste of the flamboyant designer's artworks which include prints on wafer thin aluminium sheets.

- Devjani Cox is a UAE-based interior stylist and writer