Tattooed bad-boy industrial designer Karim Rashid, 54, has lent his signature touch to projects small and large — from the tear-shaped bottle of Method hand soap to funky furniture to a handful of colorful Manhattan building projects for real estate development and investment group HAP Investments.
One of these projects, the nine-story, 20-unit HAP Five NY, broke ground last month in East Harlem, and is slated for an end-of-year completion.
We sat down with Rashid to discuss his recent projects, what inspires his work and where he shops.
Even as a child, I wanted to design. All I did was draw. I would draw every object in the house.
I was also into bright colors, which a lot of children are, and I never lost that. I think we’re suppressed in society when we’re not supposed to like or do certain things as you get older.
I always drifted towards people who were renaissance types, who could really touch small, large and everything in between. That’s what I wanted to do.
I remember being 13 or 14 and looking at a book of Le Corbusier and thinking what an amazing architect he was, but he also designed clothes and painted — he was a pluralist. And my father, he was not only a painter and a set designer for film and TV, but he also designed every piece of furniture in our house and built it.
He would also make dresses for my mother that she would wear out the same night. It was inspiring to see that.
When I started designing furniture, I was trying to see what I could do with an object to elevate its function or originality. As a creative person, you need to express yourself, so you have to find out what’s going to differentiate what you do versus what another designer would do.
I recently designed the Gemma armchair for an Italian company, B-LINE. Their price points are good and I love designing for them. The important part about furniture in a space is giving a sense of uniqueness. There’s a tendency with furniture where we get conventional. There’s so much out there now that you can have a lot of fun and make your home a positive, energetic place. It’s also about pushing boundaries to get people to see the world differently.
I remember crafting the Oh! Chair — now a 17-year-old design — and I was thinking about function more than anything. I’ll make a lightweight chair.
I’ll make a chair that has holes in it so I can pick it up and stack it easily — a chair that’s tilted back a little more for comfort. All those things I did that are very practical kept it on the market because it worked in the end.
I live with all my work. I’ve designed everything in my home, down to the forks and knives. I like to use the products, to see their problems and how I can make them better.
In New York, there are great places to buy furniture. There’s the MoMA store, which sells classic pieces by some of the most important designers of the last century, like Charles Eames. There’s also ddc, which is on 34th Street and Madison Avenue.
As for museums, I went to the Stedelijk in Amsterdam two weeks ago and enjoyed their collection of the last 150 years of furniture design.
Now, I’m working on several New York City building projects — three of which are in Upper Manhattan. They’re the 47-unit HAP Four NY [at 653-667 W. 187th St.], the 20-unit HAP Five NY [at 329 Pleasant Ave.], which broke ground last month, and the mixed-use HAP Six NY [at 1653-1655 Madison Ave.].
I’m also designing a 21-story apartment building across from FIT in Chelsea that’s in the design phase.
When I moved to New York 23 years ago, I lived on the corner of 27th Street and Seventh Avenue. It comes full circle — I’m going to be building right near where I lived.