Shaping A Better World

Designer Karim Rashid on objects that improve lives, his best-selling trash can and his hope for a more colourful future

- Courtney Shea

Your retrospective exhibit at the Ottawa Art Gallery is called Cultural Reshaping and you’ve said that the role of a designer is to improve the world. Can you expand on that?

Design is human-centric—it’s about making our experiences better, more functional, more seamless. People make the mistake of thinking what I do is superficial, but consider this: when you get on an airplane, that cockpit was conceived to be the most efficient, most perfect interface. Someone designed that. It’s amazing how many objects we have produced since the Industrial Revolution that make our lives better, and our society more democratic. All of us are living a much better life than we were before that time—not just the people who can afford to.

When you look at your extensive body of work—comprising over 4,000 creations—is there one that best achieves that objective?