Karim Rashid visisted Chicago last week to speak at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Because of his views on Nostalgia, I thought it might be appropriate to ask him some questions from the past, the very same questions Charles Eames was asked by Madame Amic in 1969... Come back again in a few days to read more about his work and his vision for the world, at the IDSA Midwest Conference!

*What is your definition of design?

Today design is based on an plethora of complex criteria; human experience, social and global issues, economic and political issues, physical and mental interaction, form, vision, and a rigorous understanding and desire of contemporary culture. Manufacturing is based on another collective group of criteria: capital investment, market share, production ease, dissemination, growth, distribution, maintenance and service, performance, quality, ecological issues and sustainability. The combination of all these issues shape our objects, informs our form, our physical space and culture, and our human experiences. These quantitative constructs together shape business, its identity, its brand, its value. This is the business of beauty. Every business should be completely concerned with beauty - and a designer must be fluent in the business of beauty - it is after all what is a collective human need. Design is a modus to contribute to shaping a better more beautiful, more poetic, more intelligent, more aesthetic, more experiential world. The built environment needs to be perpetually improved. Design does change our everyday lives, our commodity, and our behaviors. There are several points that define design simultaneously - production methods, materials, human interface, technologies, comfort, behavior, form, aesthetics, costs, mobility, shipping of goods, ease of assembly, context, use, and most importantly the culture of the company you work with. If it is not a marriage of the designers ideology and the brand, then it will not be successful. Design is not a selfish act, it is a collaborative one, deisng is for everyone, not an elite group.

*Is design an expression of art (art form)?

My work is a merging of Art and design and has to be part of the collectible global culture, not removed, insular, elitist, and irrelevant. The 21st. century is about a new energy, of material, immaterial, of formlessness and form of transparency and color; of smell and vapor, a kinesthetic binary hypercontextual existence - a digital nature, a kaleidoscope of elevated experiences. I am in working in a democratic (Designocracy) field where words like class, elite, taste, and mass are all defunct. One world where everything should be accessible, with no boundaries. The digital age represents this place - irreal and real, virtual, meta physical, and physical spaces, layered together where everyone can participate and everyone is equal. Objects smell, taste, breathe, touch, and participate in all our experiences. I am passionate, obsessed, and try to stay as broad as possible so that I can touch every part of our built environment.

Design and architecture will play an important role in intensifying this reality. It can provide and maintain our enjoyment of living and nurture a direct experience with the energy and Modus of the time. I see the future of our aesthetic world crossing all the aesthetic disciplines so that design, art, architecture, fashion, food, music, fuse together to increase our experiences and bring greater pleasure to our material and immaterial lives. Our motivations should focus around our conscious collective memory and a desire to fill it with ideas that are seamless between art and life. As art takes its ideas from everyday life and I hope that everyday life will take its ideas from art.

*What are the boundaries of design?

Although I answered this above I will add that everyday I live I believe that we could be living in an entirely different world - one that is full of real contemporary inspiring objects, spaces, places, worlds, spirits, experiences with ever-changing new traditions and new rituals- replacing the old. Design has been the cultural shaper of our world form the start. We have designed systems, cities, industrialization - we designed everything. My real desire is to see people live in a the modus of our time, to participate in contemporary world, and to release themselves form nostalgia, antiquated traditions old rituals, kitsch meaningless, and that we should be conscious and sensorially attune with this world in this moment. If Human nature is to live in the past - to change the world is to change human nature.