he is now returning to his roots with his Ottawabased exhibition. Cultural Shaping will feature in excess of 200 of Rashid’s award-winning projects, including the Garbino trash can and the Oh chair, both designed for Umbra, as well as furniture for BoConcept. This impressive retrospective will illustrate what drives and inspires the designer. The title of the exhibition itself encapsulates his philosophy. “I always saw design as cultural shaping,” says Rashid, “and if you look at history … almost all of it we understand through artifact, through physicality.” By way of example, he explains how we can gain understanding of the Ming dynasty by analyzing a single urn. “It captures the civility of the time, the politics of the time,
“GOOD DESIGN IS WHEN FUNCTION AND FORM OR ESTHETICS ARE INSEPARABLE” even the technology of how that urn was made [at] the time, so we shape culture through our physical commodity,” says Rashid. “We know that history through the physicality of the objects shaping things that we embraced and used.” Based on the object’s style and composition, we can glean information about the culture of the time it was created, because the way we create is indicative of the way we live. In his own design, Rashid captures the present moment while also adding new aspects to change perceptions and challenge the status quo, whether by using new technologies, materials or production methods, or by highlighting issues of sustainability. “I’m just trying to make the world function and feel better … more seamless and more experiential and more positive and more energetic,” says Rashid. “[I’m] trying to bring these qualities, things that I personally need to be inspired or to feel alive — I’m trying to give that to others.” Based on his style, people sometimes assume incorrectly that Rashid is not environmentally conscious. His plastic designs and striking colours do not conform to society’s prescribed signifiers of eco-consciousness. “We have this language of sustainability, right — it’s brown, wood, green, concrete floor — but it doesn’t have to be that way at all,” says Rashid. “I do all these crazy,
With hundreds of creations ranging from hotels, to chairs, to water bottles and vases, Rashid finds inspiration building on what he has done in the past as he creates new products
36 DOLCE MAGAZINE | www.dolcemag.com
WINTER 2018/19