DEPARTURES BORN TO ROAM
DEPARTURES BORN TO ROAM 28 Practical Magic IT IS PERHAPS the industrial designer’s curse that everywhere they go they see ways of improving things. The year before Covid hit, Karim Rashid – the American Design Prize winner, whose work has encompassed hotels and wastepaper bins, shops, chairs, power tools and perfume bottles, lights and luggage – got to deepdive into the travel experience. He spent 211 nights in hotels across 36 cities around the world. The results of the survey were not good. “It’s clear that we haven’t yet designed an efficient way to board planes, and the plane interior has barely changed in the last 40 years. Then we need to rethink the bathrooms, the food, the seats, the service. I could go on Light floods the minimalist dining area of Rashid’s glass-walled home in New Jersey With a function-first approach and pragmatic vision, Karim Rashid counts as one of his generation’s most prolific product designers. Josh Sims sat down with him to discuss the future of travel – from airports to hotel rooms and beyond. and on,” he laughs. And he does. “We need the interiors to be more engaging to make travel enjoyable and inspiring. We need to redesign the signage in airports and on roads, the airports, passport controls, security control areas and baggage claim, to increase mental and physical comfort. We should explore ways to travel without any physical documents. Really, travel needs a lot of work.” And that work will come, he adds – with a positivity that perhaps only a designer so intimately associated with such a colourful, sensuously minimalistic, futuristic style might muster. Indeed, he says, for the sake of travel, with its stresses, expense and carbon expenditure, it must. “Design can solve and improve all of travel’s challenges. FROM TOP: ALEX ULREICH, COURTESY KARIM RASHID
But perhaps the greatest outcome of Covid is the awareness that we don’t have to travel if it’s not for pleasure any more. So much can be accomplished digitally,” says the British- Egyptian, Canadian-raised and New York-based designer. Well, some things. With a typical work schedule put on hold over the last couple of years, Rashid has been shuttling back and forth to fulfil some passion projects instead: building his first home for himself, in New Jersey – “my clients are much more relaxed about their projects than I am about this,” he says – and, from this September, launching his own Italian, low-sulphide wines in a bottle that, naturally, he designed, too. “The wine is called ‘Karim’ - ha!” he laughs, at the lack of imagination. Perhaps too, Covid’s break on production and sales of so many things has given some much-needed breathing space. “It’s true that if we stopped making anything for the next 50 years we’d already have enough stuff. And, curiously, my daughter is so digital she doesn’t really care about things so much [as older generations might] – and I think that will happen more and more,” says Rashid. “So, yes, I’ve thought, ‘Why do we need another one of these?’ many times when I’ve been asked to design something. But that’s where the challenge lies.” For Rashid, that means upping the ante on functionality, from which, he says, comes longevity. Contrary to his reputation for distinctive styling, he’s actually obsessed with how things work. “I’m perpetually looking at social behaviour and how people use things,” he says. “I’m actually so practical it annoys me, so when I design a hotel room, for example, I’m most concerned that the guest doesn’t bump into things, where the light switches are, that the space works well. That’s more important than the end visualisation. Bad design just becomes an obstacle to everyday life.” And adding to the sum total of good design – even marginally so – perhaps explains why Rashid, perhaps more so than any designer of his generation, is so prolific. By one count, he has had some 4,000 objects and projects in production over the last three decades. In part, this is, he says, because he has more ideas than clients to make them real. Jokingly, he also puts this down to his lack of integrity. “Designers sometimes border too much on the artistic side and aren’t prepared to compromise. I’m one who has compromised a lot,” says Rashid. “But it’s not about you and your ego, drawing something and saying ‘Make this!’ Why did a client come to you in the first place? They want to sell more things, so you have to design something that makes sense for them. You have to take off the artist’s hat to get things made. And at least then you can take satisfaction from having improved what’s available in that category even slightly. You’ve added a little bit of something better.” And, OK, something that most likely looks better, too. The look of an object or space – and so part of its appeal – is, after all, also part of its function. Rashid speaks of a recent trip to a hotel in Berlin – one he’d designed, with rooms in blue, silver or pink – and overhearing a conservative-looking guest complaining that there was no way he was staying in a pink room. Two days later at breakfast, Rashid overheard the same guest waxing lyrical to a colleague about how much he loved his room. “Why? Because it’s an amazing experience,” says Rashid. “That made my day because I managed to change his perception of things. We live in this utopia-like time in which we could have anything and yet we pull back and conform for fear of standing out. But I have hope that he went home from his travels and changed his interior.” “We notice that the sophisticated luxury leisure traveller has a desire for ‘authentic authenticity’ in their experiences – no more dogand-pony shows, people want to experience unique places without the choreography and performance. They want it to be real, honest and spontaneous. Luxury tourism, more than ever, is moving more and more towards exclusive nature and adventure experiences. People not only want the comfort of exclusivity but the cachet of experiencing places few others have – while in incredible style and comfort, of course.” Jason Friedman, luxury hospitality consultant, jmfriedman.com 29 DEPARTURES
