Technology is changing the way we would stay with us. Now welcome to sophie visionaries. Improving our lives with every day objects the design of todays about comfort and function and today my guest is one of the most prolific designers iconic designers of our times karim rashid. Artists do all the owner hi great to have you with us today you look wonderful thank you so do you agree moscow day of the year old pink and serious side of ray of sunshine well in the winter moscow gets a bit crazy but you know most cities around the world get quite great so then they have you talking with. Us all right so i want to start over with one of your motos which is you should grasp the luxury of freedom. Instead of luxury of the physical world but then i know that you are super famous and super in demand and you do all kinds of designs for high end 5 star hotels. Where does that fit and i think thats luxury frederic all you need you made a mistake there most of the hotels i do are 2 star 3 star and more democratic in fact i did a hotel i dont know about 7 years ago in germany and it was 2 star so when you go in stay forget the stars when you go stay with 39 youre always certain youre at the stay the host tell basically almost by private you know room right super design very high design very comfortable casual experience full hotel is beautiful. And i con it to prove to the world that its not about money its a lot of developers and people think that design means high budget just for example for many years we always saw design as an elite subject or a high art but its actually not a high art at all design is should be like the dust revolution taught us for the mass market its for accessibility so wants to do stuff that you do if its not for hotels but like designer pieces how much would it cost because yes youre absolutely right anything that is a designer piece of furniture anything is like having a piece of art you know the latest thing you cannot be democratic and for everybody but thats changed now look at look at a good comparison of whats going on. Now in the design world is whats already happened in the fashion world the very high end fashion brands Luxury Brands are a lot of them are having trouble. Meaning financial trouble but also just trouble in the sense of vision a lot of them dont really even know where to go anymore and there was a time when if you went back 3040 years that every fashion house had a very different sensibility and vision style right so it was and they took ownership you know so for example coco chanel was very very different then i dont know gucci and gucci was very different than product of a and goes on and on today theres such because everybodys following trends which this has to do with digital age too but also as if theyre running out of vision or ideas so what happens is the only way they can compete is the name so im always amazed at this like you open up a spread of a magazine and you see i dont know a track pants for a woman with a big straight down the side and on the stripe you see busking you know or prada or and because the name is the only thing this differentiating now now in the design world the same thing is starting to happen because you have the and the competition there is that you have a nation ends and the mangoes and you know all the mass market is powerful and its really giving in a way you could argue good design now you can see in design same thing the ikeas of the world and the mass market of the world is showing the world that are beautiful contemporary couch could be 110th the price of the luxury couch so its more accessible and i think this is a beautiful thing ive always been a big believer in this notion of i call it design ocracy democratic design where we all can have a better life. All of that its for a majority and whats taught is this is the digital age i read the other day that theres. A many one and a half 1000000000 smartphones in the world. I have a whole block prepared for the. Talk a little bit the concept and the design so talking a little bit more about the luxury of freedom and luxury this is a cold what is a luxury of freedom well you know when in history in our analog 100000 years of humanity we defined luxury through materiality so precious stones or precious materials for certain crossman ship these sorts of things so 40 years ago it took 40 men 3 months to make a rolls royce right and today you make it robotic you know you make it like you can make a nice. So the luxury of being i think question and redefined in a way. But what i realize now is that luxury in the digital age worse is the analogue its about having the means of seamless communication you know clothes the world is becoming one luxury is to have a 1000 friends around the world luxuries for affords me to work and im working 49 countries right now if Frank Lloyd Wright was alive today or because so can imagine what they could be doing how prolific they could be we thought they were prolific then you can be very prolific now so these are the new forms of luxury and then i personally i realised in the last couple years what is luxury for me and i concluded that it was free time because i realised that the majority of us work so hard. And were so inundated with a lot that we when we have that moment to be alone or to be with someone we love or to be with our family or to. Meditate or to these things exercise alone do things that are really personal this is a luxury luxury and my 2nd definition of luxury is that youre on this earth to do what you were put on this earth to do that means you live a luxurious life in other words if you can reach a position where the passion you have inside you. Youre fulfilling youre doing it i think youre living the most luxurious life i want to talk to you a bit about the whole you know historical d. N. A. That lives in us even though we live in a completely different era and every day theres such Technology Breakthrough that we cant even catch up anymore but were saying that we should be looking into the past for inspiration then we should be nostalgic but then i feel like so many good things came out from renewing past things for instance like mia classicism came from and to quickly or enter no steam came from victorian age you know what i mean why forget everything that was in a pass if we can use it and transform into something beautiful of the present or the future you know what the question there is is that beautiful or is it just kind of a momentary blip trend or something you know you have to have to say when you finally said the word beautiful beautiful with not just a static its. How can i say its a feeling you know its a motion of feeling and im sure you can take things from the past and revisit them and do something that maybe a little bit interesting maybe maybe beautiful but i dont really believe in this and the reason i dont believe in this is because like we mixing up music you know i hear so much music because ive been teaching for 40 years and i hear so many tracks that i know the origin of the track. And the origin of the track for me was enough that you didnt really does society need to revisit it you know but as a designer and as a creator our goal was to do something original and new. And and to move and progress and evolve humanity you know make a better world in a way so every time i every project i do for me its very important that its now its not about trying to copy a style and thats the danger and the problem has been to sea of humanity as we live in fear and the biggest fear we have all now is that the digital age is so amazing and so seductive that were hanging on to what we think it gives us some sort of security which is past i think a lot of fears regarding digital age are instinctive as well because right now when we go full fledged into that age because that its inevitable theres no turning back we still dont have any sets the rules of how to exist in that world and ill tell you what i mean for instance not having a bag and being able to just walk around the world or fly around the what with your finger creates or with a chip hear radio so you google here you photograph from here your fingerprint is all you need to get access to your bank account or to your phone. Yes it gives you a great deal of physical freedom because you dont carry anything around but. Theres always someone who is a kone going to be wanting to be on top of that in terms of controlling you so when you have a cheap inside you that is when you lose your freedom completely because theres always the other side to that i dont agree. But that little children are there to let me jerk ok let me try such danger exists unless we all get together and say like this should be our personal freedom but it is regulated by ok because otherwise the whole big brother thing ok its still reality that i look at us for different argument ok historically 3 percent 2 percent of the world was rich and 98 percent was in poverty ok then we developed a middle class with modernism right now today 30 percent of the world is and is middle class. So. History was always about a massive occasion a suppression i should say of mass it was the pharaohs it was the dynasties it was kings it was politicians always putting everybody down keeping keeping the majority down even creative people were exiled right. But. You know anybody that was artistic was odd or different but the mass had to be controlled so the mass was always control now we get to a point of the digital age and we sit there and worry about big brother but the reality is that if you are a decent civil good human being you have nothing to hide. So whether someone knows about your existence or not so what the only thing that can come the best thing to come out of all this is all the corruption and all the greed and all the violence and everything thats lets say relatively illegal is exposed and i just want to say really quickly i have a theory called the age of transparency we are moving into this epoch transparency you know what it means it means that with wiki leaks that started 12 years ago with living in a being on shanghai on the 98th floor of a building my hotel room is only glass between me and all of shanghai i can stand and mean. Thats transparent so from a physical metaphysical and a how can i say a spiritual level everything were going to move into this real honesty the other day a Massive Corporation i wanted to speak to the president the c. E. O. I googled who is linked in linked in i got his email address i sent them an email he sent an email back home this is the new world this world the democratic world empowers each and every one of us creatively we all have a voice we all can this. Are being our existence and in the digital age. Age were all free no borders no boundaries and we are equal why do we see more wells and raising out here this is as for exactly that and where exactly does it go and metaphysical. In the last 40 years we have Something Like 32 new countries you know that 3032 new countries the last 30 why the fear the fear that since this is the digital age is borderless about if were going to become nationalistic or patriotic because were afraid were fraid were losing something so people are becoming more fanatic religions are becoming more fanatic borders and boundaries are closing and its only now because its temporary because right now is the mulch of this moment i think the schism between 100000 years of digital i mean god analog and 40 years of digital so its only the beginning when you say 100 years from now it may happen great so you know my daughter 6 and a half so maybe shell because an average human being can live to 120 maybe shell see that change but my my i know whats going to happen with this world my feeling with this world this right now is were so confused and fearful and theres a certain generation thats controlling all the Politics Around the world still when that generation dies off and children that are brought up in this new freedom who really are less materialistic dont really care about these things dont really even want automobiles small to live right beside their job want to ride a bicycle this movement is global and its going the world is going to haas to go with the star rection and its going to change the current were going to take a short break right now when were back well continue talking to karim rashid one of the most iconic designers of our time stay with us. Economic system known as capitalism has generated more wealth than any other system in history in many ways it has defined majority itself hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty however capitalism has also witnessed growing income inequality the appeal of socialism currently on the rise in companies and. Now were back with karim rashid karim are we not going no one or feel or long for anything is historic ever because for me oh dear me well reading a book smelling a book is priceless ok and no app on my smartphone will ever replace that and i know that if something catastrophic doesnt happen to the book my kids will smell it the same way and my grandchildren will whats the app like here replace it every year and a smartphone or tablet or whatever disks they dont stay with you i dont see my grandchildren being oh this is the tablet of my grandfather or grandmother and you know what i mean so let me tell you something i just decided a mobile phone. It took 2 years it was on the market its just now i want to open shop to see the phone its already gone and replaced the speed of this i agree with you you know what i design something in the digital age i almost like its not i dont even get to really enjoy it so i design a chair it last 50 years you know it could be a 100 years its a good chair so i guess i agree and then let me just say so because i designed physical thing. So its not like im so pro virtual and i want to go and you know float in space i love the physical world i love touching things i love smelling them i love feeling them i love hearing them i love it all i love to sensorium when i design a hotel i worry about the smell of the hotel i worry about i work on the music of the hotel i do it all i love it right im a physical being like we are we love each other the skin the smell the touch and theres Nothing Better than holding somebody or hugging somebody this is not nature yes ok so im going on there but when you talk about history i would have no problem going to the cairo museum and i see a folding chair from 3000 years ago huge before all these things are sacred and we should hang on to them but we dont need to copy and copy and coffee and repeat them when they are now have no relevance so yeah i was in dubai all the buildings coming up in front of me are have these terrible kitsch fake neoclassical for thoughts what a shame building 3 huge skyscrapers that have nothing to do with dubai nothing to do with the context nothing to do with the age we live in nothing to do with the technologies of construction that we can do now or the softwares of design you see and when im designing a building in new york and the whole street is all brown brick little brown brick buildings and theyre very upset of the building im going to do right and i was making a white and pink modernists think the whole neighborhood got very upset and they all signed a petition and i said to them all i stood and i had to bring all the neighbors together i had a talk and i showed the rendering and i said to them all 100 years ago when those great buildings were dog it was state of the Art Technology the window at one time was only to speak so we made a grill frayne to make more bigger windows then the window got that big today the windows from the floor and i can do it for meters one piece of cloth so why dont i use the technology of the day just like a 100 year. Ago the brick the brown brick was the technology of the time so all im saying is when you design you design with the criteria of today to shape the future. So that i make this whole the last box because thats the technology i can do today and maybe in 3050 years from now theres a Better Technology then the glass box and then that will be the next thing and thats the progress and evolution of humanity it doesnt mean to say that some of those brick buildings shouldnt be retained if theyre beautiful and they speak about an error like you go to london the buildings are a match let them 17th century 1819 so do you think of the red phone booths in london will be. Reproduced in the future all millers you know no but they can put one in a museum in the gallery we know what we can read about them we can know about the history of them you know even books or the physical things you talk about even if one day theyre not books around theyll be books around meaning that we can hang onto books as like a sculpture like art or like something you have on your wall or you have a piece of jewelry from your great grandmother on your finger these are beautiful things there speak about history they speak about our traditions our culture but theres no need to take that ring and make a fake and this is the problem i think a lot of the world its what you know the german word kitsch and kitsch by definition right is a cheap replica of the original why you make cheap replicas of the original that the original retain itself stand be beautiful just a little more about things from which were designing a sure sign you up plastic is that its very agile its the thing of the future its democratic where you can make cheap things like that but now we see like everyone going from plastic bottles to glass bottles from plastic bags to paper bags and Everyone Wants everything in wood instead of plastic why do you still believe so much in plastic what is it about plastic that you know resonates in you in the future. Well you have to. My history is that when i was designing. In the early eightys in order to make a nice teakettle or electric kettle i mean or electric drill i did for black and decker or a garbage can these things had to be in order to produce some cheap enough for a majority of people brought of a lot yes like a change this world in the last 150 years at the same time we didnt know enough about it it hadnt been around long enough for us to know the whats the word im looking for the. The pollution issues the eyeball the bushes but the results of what what what these things are going to do to us the contamination etc toxins all this so side effects so we could know these things so with that said now we now know how a lot of knowledge about it yes at the same time theres a polymers out there that are amazing they can do Amazing Things that are recyclable forever theres polymers for example recently that i used to arrive from sugar to create polyethylene we used to take oil go through 7 stages to get all the out to me you take sugarcane and you go to ethanol goes to all the ethylene in 3 stages we dont eat sugar grows rapidly its not a food source in fact its created diabetes and obesity and heart attacks its and we never eat sugar up till 240 years ago we fruit and vegetables so great you can make pasta cannot now think about the world we live in i mean hospital and 7080 percent of the things in the hospital are polymer plastics the artificial hearts plastic we could go on and on you know contact lenses plastic that plastics serve an amazing role and changed humanity the problem was we didnt know what was the good versus the bad plastic we didnt focus on making plastics that are biodegradable. You know so now i use a lot of. The famous garbage can. 25 years ago it sold like i dont know 15000000 now its in by a great big degradable polymer finally because the companies that are producing these things only really started the rigorous development of these things 15 years ago and even now the price points for these rare a good polymers that we can save the planet are more expensive than the oil derived. Once the price comes down its like buying organic milk versus regular milk once the price starts to match closer more of the companies which they should be using anyway this should be a mandate well be using those biodegradable polymers so we will still have beautiful organics all human things that are plastic democratic cheap but theyll be all by degradable and thats the evolution next in the next 20 years this was going to happen all of these plastics around us would be able to cry and up into the soil right of glass and paper and wood coming back is just a trend no no no no its enough for a lot of other reasons a lot of the palms weve created that are talks that are giving off gases and are dangerous you know m. D. F. Which is fiberboard its used in furniture the the glue this m. D. F. Together is meaning a person is toxic and it gives off gas in your home. So the ikeas of the world and all these people making knock down furniture everybodys like living with a bunch of dangerous talks and the carpets are emitting the polyurethane out of a lot of the furniture is all admitting these are all polymers you know so we all of a sudden are getting cancer a rapid rate of cancer you know its one out of 3 in america one of the foreign western europe its crazy 100 years ago it was one out of 300 in america was getting cancer you know so somethings wrong right so all these polymers have contributed to a really dangerous planet so we need to go back to glass because then were not drinking out of a plastic bottle right which by the way we have to stop either everywhere i go its crazy every hotel everywhere now. It was nice i got a paper cup with water in it you know so we have a lot of problems that were solving you know theres a lot of companies and a lot of amazing i would say amazing people out there and i know there are aggressively making huge changes to this kind of toxic environment that weve created kermit was such a pleasure talking to you and i wish. I walk i guess theyre showing right now were not. 3rd time it was great talking to you to your amazing me thank you so much pushed thank you and with all your future endeavors thank you thank you. What do you hear about why you want to why you. Cant. All the yes and the euro and the dollar they all refer to each other and theyre all going deeper and deeper into debt so theres no basic there or there theres no so theres no way to measure the dead against something that is could be considered money remember j. P. Morgan said only gold is money Everything Else is credit or debt ok so without that there is no way to measure that debt and theres no at the moment you know my my view is that this is leading to a neo feudalism poor you have just a few private equity firms owing 98 percent of all the assets of everyone elses living as serfs on that were getting back to the dark ages. Of creating the special something we can benefit so is one of the many books. But. With we also wish. You thought the whole doping in russia think was over for get it. Through a complete brochure with some of the models from. Russian outlets eligibility for the International Competition season steak this includes events like the Tokyo Olympics and the fee for world cup and qatar if i am in the early as last. Year when you come in you know just as it was 4 years ago in moscow antidoping plavix at the center of the scandal so who tampered with the duping samples database and one does greegor you want to give have to do with it and you know shes stupid because weve got to pull a mean you could. Use the push on the show you. But to expose some innocent little. Constitutional scholars weigh in on impeachment and they impacted the proceedings one way or another were talking to the actual words on this edition of the politics. Of politicking on larry king on wednesday the House Judiciary Committee heard from 4 constitutional experts about whether or not President Trump committed impeachable offenses did their testimony change the game by any measure a saw that with the Political Panel they are alex vogel he previously served as chief counsel to Senate Majority leader bill frist and former general counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee hes in washington and in Mountain View california zach friend he worked d for barack obama and john kerrys president ial campaigns as a spokesman and strategist alex vogel on the testimony that anything impress you more than that well i think this was really the the pregame if you will to set up the more politically explosive and interesting ones that i think they felt the need that they had to do this one to try and lay some of the procedural groundwork for the process the piece that i found interesting was Jonathan Turley is. Not withstanding that he was technically the republican witness today i dont think a lot of people consider professor turley a fire breathing conservative i certainly didnt when he was a professor of my law school a long time ago but i think what was interesting was it did. Show us that there is not unanimity in the academic Legal Community whether you agree with him or not on this specific issue he is certainly a respected voice on the constitution i think Everything Else frankly was fairly predictable but i do think that that at least provided some differentiated for
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