Design Yourself- Karim Rashid- CDI 2017

[Music] [Applause] [Music] hello everybody it's great to be here in the city of ideas the world obviously at this point in time has changed drastically in the last 30 years so I'm gonna speak very very quickly about this the first thing I'm going to speak about though is my subject of heart here which is design and what is design design is shaping the entire built environment in fact design is about every human experience possible because every object you touch which by the way we engage or touch approximately six seven hundred objects every day every one of us so you can imagine how these objects have a huge impact on our daily lives on our emotions on our mental psyche on our physical and functional and physiological spiritual and experiential world that we live in design is taking contemporary criteria this is the real definition I'm going to be a little bit pedantic and we take contemporary terior to shape the future so for example if I design a mobile phone obviously I'm dealing with the latest latest technologies the latest materials the latest interface if I'm developing the interface itself I'm dealing with the let's say most prescient way of interfacing in order for telecommunications so when I design a mobile phone it's a contemporary object and in turn I shape the next let's say one year two years three years of behaviors so design is not at all in this regard about looking in the past design is about working with contemporary criteria to shape the future if I design a polymer chair today I would take a chair and think about the client the market the distribution of the object the material of the object if I have to make an expensive chair I'd probably think of a polymer that's there expensive to use it could be something like a polypropylene because it's a how can I say responsible polymer because if I burn it I just got vapor or I could think about even a better polymer today which may be something that's completely biodegradable in fact I just finished in Brazil a chair a plastic chair this made from and derived from sugar instead of using petroleum and we all our polymers are actually going to shift and we're going to be using the polymers that are derived from from natural resources versus petroleum so then I'm designing a chair I say okay I'm a designer nice plastic chair and what am I gonna do with this chair I'm gonna make it lightweight easy soft to pick up super comfortable I may think about the age that we live in today which is the age of casual ism meaning that when we sit in a chair we don't sit like we sat in a chair 30 40 years ago we don't sit upright anymore we tend to kind of slouch a little more sorry maybe I designed the chair that's a little more inclined if I make it of a polymer that's a little bit flexible my body moves hence I'll be more comfortable in it for a longer period of time I could make that polymer with all kinds of additives so that chair could be transparent or translucent it could glow in the dark it could even change color due to my body heat there's all kinds of things I could do today in the material world in the technological world that would make a chair that speaks about today when we look at history of humanity we dissect it and understand it due to our artifacts all the effigies of objects that existed for tens of thousands of years so if we take for example a Vaz from the Ming Dynasty and we pull it out of the ground and we brush it off and we study it we understand the social life of the time we understand the religion of the time we understand the technology of the time in other words that object represented or marked a moment in history so when we design we do the same thing we're marking the time in which we live that's what design is but design is misunderstood because a lot of people think the design is style and style is not about using contemporary art earier style is about looking into history so when we think about history me dissect history we say well it's interesting that we look at a movement that when a movement in we call it a style so we think about I don't know the Renaissance style the Baroque style the Belle époque style the classical style neoclassical style brutalist style modernist style these are all periods that have basically ended and the way we understand the chronology of our human existence is through these Styles so he's able today as I'm working in this day and age I'm working in what is the style of the moment there is no style of the moment because we're actually within a specific movement if I had to call the movement that we're in right now something I would probably call it maybe the data-driven movement or I'd call it the digital movement or the digital age movement something to the extent of the fact that for the first time in history that we know all of humanity in the last 50 thousand years we live in the digital age in other words binary notation zero and one for 40 years now has created one common global language and is completely shaping a new human experience it experienced like we've never had before the way we had experiences the way we understood our history was through physicality through materiality but in the last 40 years things are shifting all of a sudden we're having more and more and more heightened experiences with less through a dematerialization and in fact I think we're at this kind of cusp a kind of turning point where we're kind of confused about how we deal and embrace and engage the digital age the analog age let's say is a hundred thousand years old it's the length of this stage then the digital age is smaller than this little pink piece of tape here meaning were just at the beginning we are what I call the Bioneers of the digital age this is all new for us and this is actually causing kind of let's say a dystrophic condition in humanity right now because the way we understood and experience the world was physical now we're experiencing and embracing and engaging the world in a in tangible way so there's a big big turning point but at the same time if I look back I say okay I'm going to not design but I'm actually gonna style what do I do to style I look back into history and I say oh somebody comes to me and says we would like you to design a hotel it's Belle Epoque like the minute they say Belle Epoque like or wouldn't Gale like or a mission like or something that means I'm going to look back at that period of history and supposedly be inspired by it now I don't believe to look back especially when you look back in imagery that you can be really inspired if anything you're appropriating and if anything you are derivative of something that took place before in history whereas design is really shaping a future because it's something that we doesn't exist at this moment in time now so that's a difficult place to cross boundaries in because as you draw and work and as I think and I try to kind of speak about the Asian which I live inevitably I'm still if I'm shaping a physical world I still will fall back into let's say the needs and desires that we have physically ie if I do a chair today it's quite difficult to design a chair that really is original you know the reason I say chairs chair you could argue is kind of the architectural icon or model of every designer in the world an architect who would love to design an original chair and let's talk about originality for a second so the question is that well can I design something original in the physical world and the age I live in if you do something original today you're one of seven point eight billion people so in other words if you wake up tomorrow morning and you have original thought and we all have original thought why we all have original thought is because we're all completely original that's why we all have a different fingerprint which is only repeated once out of thirty billion or an original iris one out of ten billion would be a very original thought but as Heidegger says to be is to build you manifest that thought that originality then you're of one of seven point eight billion but you're not only one point of seven one of seven point eight billion people you're actually one of the history of humanity and history of humanity estimate hundred and seventy billion people so I every morning what wakes me gets me up in the morning is to do something original and my first thought when I wake up in the morning is can I do something original this world and if I'm gonna do something original if I have an idea if I'm going to create what's going to inspire me well I won't go and look into the past why because besides the fact that the past has been done and the past is pointless and we don't need more and you could argue in the material world we actually right now need less and less and less I need to look in the present and there's a saying that I heard years and years and years ago that artists they don't see the future they see the present everybody else sees the past so I made a kind of a personal doctrine in a way that I only will engage the present and exist and live and be in the present and this is the way I am inspired and this is the way I try to find original thought and have original ideas now the world around us has been designed in two dimensions so you can imagine for a good few thousand years all the way back to the pyramids and Babylon we designed in 2d we saw the world two dimensionally in fact we all know that we only for the first time started the document three dimensions which during the Renaissance this is I find amazing actually for thousands of years somebody couldn't look at this audience and realize that the people back there are much smaller than the people in front and somehow to pick that on paper it's kind of amazing actually that we didn't see that but anyway we design in two dimensions and the two dimensions created this 3d world we live in so this Cartesian world we live in and let me say why as his Cartesian because everything is based on a matrix the Android system and iOS system is a matrix a grid in fact I was designing a new mobile phone in Israel a few years ago and we made it a phone that was an oval beautiful little thing it was oval flat little screen we could not produce it because you can cut the LCD display in an oval but then inevitably one of those operating systems is going to give you a rectangle so this is the Cartesian world we live in if I design a credit card for Citibank it's a rectangle why because it has to go into 1.6 million ATM machines around the world that take a rectangle if I design a kitchen for Italians Russians I make many kitchens they end up inevitably becoming a grid to fit into a condominium that's also a grid it's a maximized square footage in the built environment and it goes on and on and on so if I design a refrigerator LG Electronics it's a grid that's 60 by 90 or 60 by 60 60 by 120 to fit into that kitchen likewise if I do something Goren yeah do a stovetop the same thing keeps happening so basically we're kind of in a sense you could argue kind of imprisoned by the Cartesian grid and where did this come from the Industrial Revolution industrial pollution was simple the first machines a cut a piece of material was was a bandsaw so you cut things straight and when you cut things straight and fast you make them cheap so inevitably our architecture became a plethora of components of Cartesian grids acoustic tiles acoustic floor panels acoustic pieces I'm sorry acoustic floors for panel's carpets carpet tiles grids of marble or more norman Aubert so we created as Cartesian world but 15 years ago there's a big turning point in fact as it older than 15 years ago when alias wavefront came out we started to develop 3d programs that we could actually design in 3d not in 2d so we looked at the world this way top bottom side front section elevation hence our cities more or less the facades were concerned as elevation all of a sudden we start designing in 3d when we start shaping in 3d we start looking at the world dimensionally as we are and we're three-dimensional and in fact we're organic were asymmetrical a straight line doesn't exist in nature so here we were fighting nature for the last 10,000 years were opposing nature by trying to make a Cartesian world so we start shaping a 3d world and in turn start shaping a 3d world what happens our technologies and our software's and rapid prototyping machines and fused deposition machines and new technologies afforded us to start to build a much more organic much more amorphous world so it's not a tendency or a trend or a style that we start to see architecture for example that's amorphous because we've been doing it now for 30 years with products and we make an object that fits in our hand make a ski pole handle and it's perfectly designed and ergonomic for one's hand and in turn inevitably that's now moving into a macro scale so from micro to macro was trying to shape a much more amorphous dimensional world which means if 2d if I design in 2d because I was brought up in the analog world and taught in the analog world and I designed in 2d and that gave me 3d if I design in 3d it's gonna give me 4d and what is 4d fourth dimension is time fourth dimension is human experience so in other words we will shape better human experiences by creating a fourth dimensional world and the fourth dimension at this point in time from a design perspective is already existing because it is the digital age the digital age thus affording us the connectivity this floor affording is a borderless world that's affording us empowerment of the individual it's affording us empowerment of creativity next thing you know everybody's participating everybody's creative last thing I'll say why because we're all born to creative to be is to create hence 99.99% of humanity the brain is ready to have original thought and to create something original so every one of us can contribute to this new world because now we're empowered to be individual and we're empowered to have a voice and we're empowered to disseminate our work and we're empowered to tell the world what we are capable of hence why every career profession right now is exponentially growing more industrial designers and graphic designers and architects and illustrators and musicians and poets and writers and me on word and on Robert because the digital age has afforded us these tools and created a democratic platform where we all have the same equality to enter the world and tell the world what we're all capable of so basically to be is to create thank you [Applause] [Music]

Channel: LaCiudaddelasIdeas

Views: 11,120

Keywords: andres roemer, roemer, ciudad de las ideas, grupo salinas, poder cívico, congreso, mentes brillantes, ideas, pláticas, conferencia, ciencia, pensar, puebla, conocimiento, pensamiento, idea, cdi, cdipuebla, talks, speakers, ted

Id: MO2w6Tm0148

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 26 2018