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Eight icons of design have joined forces with Orange22 Design Lab to launch the firm's Blank Canvas Project. All of the super high-profile designers have created new editions of Orange22's indoor-outdoor, eco-friendly Botanist furniture. Botanist matches each designer's royalty to a foundation or charity of their choice. The Orikami is a contribution to the new digital and information age by Karim Rashid, a perennial winner of the Chicago Athenaeum Good Design award, I.D. Magazine Annual Design Review and Red Dot Award, Karim was also honored early in his career with the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Design Award, and the Brooklyn Museum Young Designer of the Year Award. Recently he received the International Furnishings and Design Association Circle of Excellence Award for Industrial Design and Pratt Legend Award.
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What was your inspiration?
I love meaningful decoration. Historically, decoration was used as a form of language, as well as a means of denoting the possibility of the human hand, the richness of craft, the workmanship of a period. With automation and the industrial revolution decoration was developed to carry on the spirit of the past, and a way of "humanizing" industrial objects. Now in our new digital age we see new digitally inspired decorative language taking place. Once decoration spoke of ritual, religious iconography, or spiritual images - now I am interested in it speaking to us about our new spiritualism - the spirit of the digital and information age.
Why is it important for you to give back?
I want to give back to “Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS”. It is one of the country's most proactive supporters of direct care for people living with HIV/AIDS. Merging care and commerce and design, since supporters of DIFFA come from all fields of fine design and the visual arts, including: architecture, fashion design, interior design, photography and consumer product design I feel I can continue to make a contribution to a cause that also has made the world of design a more public subject.
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