Interview with Designer Karim Rashid, New York

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How do you approach building design?

What interests me is to think more about the human experience at an anthropometric level: how we sit in space, how we enjoy the space. Rather than look at architecture more objectified or a style of a building, look at it how we’re using it and experiencing it. I guess because I’m a product designer, that’s the way I think.

And the second part is to see what kind of innovation I can do. If not in construction, at least in material, and if not in materials at least in social behaviors in space. In a condominium, I’ve been thinking about lifestyle, the way people live, reconfiguring space so that you can have a better domestic life. You’ll find a beautiful building in New York, and the architecture is beautiful, and then you go inside and it’s a total disconnect. Let’s talk about your New York buildings, all of which are being done for HAP Investments.

Three are in Harlem and one is in Chelsea. The biggest project is in Chelsea.

The construction drawings are in for HAP 4 on West 187th, and construction will start by the end of this year. The building is made of very new and sophisticated modern construction, preassembled off site in Pennsylvania. HAP 5 at 329 Pleasant — that’s the one that’s under construction now, and that’s the one that’s had some controversy about colors. It was initially magenta and turquoise. Now the building is white and magenta. What was the thought process behind the original color palette anyway?

Neighborhoods need color added. The closer we live to the Equator the more colorful our built environment — our clothes, our architecture, everything — but the farther away we go the more monochromatic and gray. Now the perversity is it should be flipped.

Source: New York Times

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