New York, New York, USA

Karim Rashid is one of the biggest names in the contemporary design market. He describes himself as “a design pervert, cultural shaper, poet of plastic, digipop rockstar.”

A citizen of the world, Rashid was born in Egypt in 1960, educated in Canada, and now based in New York. The designer is famous for a futuristic pop appeal that he has instilled into his design creations.

He belongs to a generation of professionals who have made the bridge between the old notion of design (something hitherto associated with the idea of exclusive and expensive furniture) and its meaning today-a tool for creating popular products that differentiate themselves from competitors by the elegance and advantages of use. He claims that there is a niche of products on market that go unnoticed and require minimum grace and lightness. So, he began to stand out also in creations of garbage bins and 3m Post-it® Notes, for example.

Rashid is one of the most unique voices in design today.

With more than 4,000 designs in production, nearly 300 awards to his name, and client work in over 40 countries, Karim’s ability to transcend typology continues to make him a force among designers of his generation.

At age 60, Rashid has designed on his own 111 tabletop projects, 59 graphic designs, 46 works of fashion, 306 furniture projects, 34 buildings, 71 lighting designs, 27 hotels, 232 household products, 76 packaging projects, 19 residential designs, 35 architectural materials projects., 102 interiors, and 93 exhibitions. More than 3,000 objects in total.

And that list keeps growing. Or rather, exploding.

His portfolio of works reads like a book of Guinness World Records.

“What stands out,” states architecture critic Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, “is that the man is driven. Scratch that. Hyper-driven. At any given point in time, he’s got a dizzying array of projects going all over the globe. Just following his Twitter feed is exhausting. The man is PRO-LIF-IC.”

“I don’t even know how to stretch the powers of punctuation to emphasize that enough.”

“Entering the mad design world of Karim Rashid is like being trapped inside a gigantic, rotating kaleidoscope, where the turning and twisting of bits of colored materials between two flat plates against two plane mirrors produce an endless variety of crazed patterns and dizzying possibilities.”

“Design is my lifelong hobby,” states Rashid. “Design is something that can be so emotional, so experiential, so romantic, so poetic, and so human and yet constantly moves us forward. We must evolve, we must innovate, and we must change. I want to change the physical world.”

“Rashid stretches the entire envelope of object and its physical design, crashing through the boundaries
like an out-of-control spacecraft that lands into a new, unexplored world of both form and function,” states Narkiewicz-Laine.

Each year, The American Prize for Design is awarded jointly by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design and The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies to designers who have made a commitment to forward the principles of design excellence within the context of our contemporary society and who elevated design to a more profound humanist statement about how our modern contemporary society can advance and progress as a result.

Given in conjunction with the Museum’s historic GOOD DESIGN Awards, which were founded in Chicago in 1950, this Prize honors a specific design practitioner with the highest pubic accolade for producing a design that promotes design excellence, innovation, and lasting design.

Candidates for the Prize are sent to The Chicago Athenaeum by design practitioners, press, and educators from around the world and the Museum’s International Advisory Committee.

The Committee’s decisions are based on core criteria: design excellence, innovation, and contributions to humanity and to the public good.

The American Prize for Design is the highest and most prestigious design award in the United States.

Previous Laureates include Gorden Wagener, Chief Designer and Executive Vice President at Daimler AG., and British architect/designer Sir Norman Foster, and Italian Ferrari Designer, Flavio Manzoni.

Karim Rashid received a Bachelor of Industrial Design in 1982 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. He holds honorary doctorates from the Ontario College of Art & Design and Corcoran College of Art & Design. He holds Honorary Doctorates from Carlton University, Pratt Institute, OCAD in Toronto, British Institute of Interior Design, and Corcoran College of Art & Design.

After his formal education, he pursued further study in Italy with Ettore Sottsass and Rodolfo Benetto among others. Alessandro Mendini was his great mentor, and his work demonstrates that he is one of Mendini’s most adherent devotees.

As a cultural shaper, Karim is a frequent guest lecturer at universities and conferences globally, aspiring to change the world by making design a public subject. He is also regularly featured in print and digital platforms by media companies like CNN, Vogue, and Elle, and countless more.

He disseminates the importance of design in everyday life. Rashid has been featured in magazines and books including Time, Financial Times, New York Times, Esquire, Elle, GQ, and countless more.

Rashid got his start not in a world of colorful plastic blobs, but in the realm of engineering. After learning that the architecture program was full at Carleton University, he opted for a degree in industrial design and went on to create x-ray equipment for KAN Industrial Designers, mailboxes for the Canadian postal service, and power tools for Black & Decker. Rashid moved over to Nike, and some other, sexier places-creating the high-profile reputation he has today.

From there, he jettisoned into super star status on his own.

“There is no living designer today that bends design with such originality, that reshapes and reinvents the object in its own unique and impressive presence, that recreates the figure, the form, and the aesthetic into something so entirely tantalizing, so fresh, and so completely unprecedented, novel, and inventive.”

“Rashid actually takes the envelope and shreds it.”

“He designs and shapes the future, not working off existing trends or styles, but reinvents anything and everything.”

“Turning it all on its head, that Miesian axiom of less will never be entirely more.”

“Moreover, with a portfolio that runs the gamut from high-end, high-concept interiors, to mass-market utilitarian objects, and distribution in every corner of the globe and every slot in the market place, his impact is undeniable,” maintains Narkiewicz-Laine.

“This professional and public acknowledgement of Rashid’s finger print on design today is long overdue.”