tv Sophie Co. Visionaries RT December 6, 2019 10:30pm-11:01pm EST
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well welcome to. improving our lives every day. the design of today's about. the most. designers of our time. artists do all the owner hi great to have you with us today you look wonderful oh thank you so do you agree moscow day and your old pink and serious side of the way of sunshine well in the winter moscow gets a bit gray but you know most cities around the world get quite great so then they have you talking with. us all right so i want to start over with one of your motos
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which is you should grasp the luxury of freedom. instead of luxury of the physical world but then i know that you are super famous and super in demand and you do all kinds of designs for a high end 5 star hotels. where does that fit and i think that's a luxury and freedom recall you know you made a mistake there most of the hotels i do are 2 star 3 star and more democratic in fact i did a hotel i don't know about 7 years ago in germany and it was 2 star so when you go in stay forget the stars when you go stay with 39 you're always certain you're at the stay the whole style basically almost by private you know room right super design very high design very comfortable casual experience full hotel is beautiful . and i con it to prove to the world that it's not about money it's a lot of developers and people think that design means high budget just for example
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for many years we always saw design as an elite subject or a high art but it's actually not a high art at all design is should be like the dust revolution taught us for the mass market it's for accessibility so wants to do stuff that you do if it's not for hotels but like designer pieces how much would it cost because yes you're absolutely right anything that is a designer piece of furniture anything is like having a piece of art you know the latest thing you cannot be democratic and for everybody but that's changed now look at look at a good comparison of what's going on. now in the design world is what's already happened in the fashion world the very high in. fashion brands luxury brands are a lot of them are having trouble. meaning financial trouble but also just trouble in the sense of vision a lot of them don't really even know where to go anymore and there was a time when if you went back 3040 years that every fashion house had
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a very different sensibility vision style right so it was and they took ownership you know so for example coco chanel was very very different then i don't know gucci and gucci was very different than product of the it was on and on today there's such because everybody is following trends which this has to do with digital age too but also as if they're running out of vision or ideas so what happens is the only way they can compete is the name so i'm always amazed at this like you open up a spread of a magazine and you see well i don't know a track pants for a woman with a big straight down the side and on the stripe you see busking you know or prada or and because the name is the only thing this differentiating now now in the design world the same thing is starting to happen because you have the and the competition there is that you have a nation ends and the mangoes and you know all the mass market is powerful and it's really giving in a way you could argue good design now you can see in design same thing the ikea's
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of the world and the mass market of the world is showing the world that are beautiful contemporary couch could be 110th the price of the luxury couch so it's more accessible and i think this is a beautiful thing i've always been a big believer in this notion of i call it design ocracy democratic design where we all can have a better life. all of that it's for a majority and was taught as this is the digital age i read the other day that there's. a many one and a half 1000000000 smartphones in the world. i have a whole block prepared for the. top a little bit the concept and the design so talking about the luxury of freedom and luxury of the physical world is a luxury of freedom well you know when in history in our analog 100000 years of humanity we defined luxury through materiality right so precious
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stones are precious materials for certain crossman ship these sorts of things so 40 years ago it took 40 men 3 months to make a rolls royce right and today you make it robotic you know you make it like you can make a nice. so the luxury of being i think question and redefined in a way. but what i realize now is that luxury in the digital age versus the analogue it's about having the means of seamless communication you know clothing world is becoming one luxury is to have a 1000 friends around the world luxuries for affords me to work and i'm working 49 countries right now frank lloyd wright was alive today or your cost so can imagine what they could be doing how prolific they could be we thought they were prolific then you can be very prolific now so these are the new forms of luxury and then i
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personally i realised in the last couple years what is luxury for me and i concluded that it was free time because i realised that the majority of us work so hard. and were so inundated with a lot that we when we have that moment to be alone or to be with someone we love or to be with our family or to. meditate or to you know these things exercise alone do things that are really personal this is a luxury luxury and my 2nd definition of luxury is that you're on this earth to do what you were put on this earth to do that means you live a luxurious life in other words if you can reach a position where the passion you have inside you. you're fulfilling you're doing it i think you're living the most luxurious life i want to talk to you a bit about the whole you know historical d.n.a. that lives in us even though we'll live in a completely different era. every day there's such technology breakthrough that we
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can't even catch up anymore but we're saying that we should be looking into the past for inspiration then we should be nostalgic but then i feel like so many good things came out from we knew we passed things for instance like near classicism came from and to quickly or enter no steam came from victorian age you know what i mean why forget everything that was in the pass if we can use it and transform to something beautiful of the present in the future you know what the question there is is that beautiful words or just kind of a momentary blip trend something you know you have to have to say when you define we say the word beautiful beautiful with not just a static it's. how can i say it's a feeling you know it's a motion of feeling and i'm sure you can take things from the past and revisit. and do something that maybe
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a little bit interesting maybe maybe beautiful but i don't really believe in this and the reason i don't believe in this is because like we mixing up music you know i hear so much music because i've been teaching for 40 years and i hear so many tracks that i know the origin of the track. and the origin of the track for me was enough that you didn't really does society need to revisit it you know but as a designer and as a creator our goal was to do something original and new. and and to move and progress and evolve humanity you know make a better world in a way so every time i every project i do for me it's very important that it's now it's not about trying to copy a style and that's the danger and the problem has been to sea of humanity as we live in fear and the biggest fear we have all now is that the digital age is so amazing and so seductive that we're hanging on to what we think it gives us some sort of security which is past i think a lot of fears regarding digital age are instinctive as well because right now when
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we go full fledged into that age because that it's inevitable there's no turning back we still don't have any sets the rules of how to exist in that world and i'll tell you what i mean for instance not having a bag and being able to just walk around the world or fly around the world with your finger it creates or with a chip hear radio so you google here you photograph from here your fingerprint is all you need to get access to your bank account or to your phone. yes it gives you a great deal of physical freedom because you don't carry anything around but there's always someone who is a kone going to be wanting to be on top of that in terms of controlling you so when you have a cheap inside you that is when you lose your freedom completely because there's always the other side to that i don't agree. with that little chairman of the ok
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let me try such danger exists oh yes we all get together and say like this should be our personal freedom but it is regulated by us ok because otherwise the whole big brother thing ok it's still reality that look at us very different argument ok historically 3 percent 2 percent of the world was rich and 98 percent was in poverty ok then we developed a middle class with modernism right now today 30 percent of the world as there is middle class. so. history was about a massive occasion a suppression i should say of mass it was the pharaohs it was the dynasties it was kings it was politicians always putting everybody down keeping keeping the majority down even creative people were exiled right. but. you
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know anybody that was artistic was was odd or different but the mass had to be controlled so the mass was always control now we get to a point of the digital age and we sit there and worry about big brother but the reality is that if you are a decent civil good human being you have nothing to hide. so whether someone knows about your existence or not so what the only thing that can come the best thing they can come out of all this is all the corruption and all the greed and all the violence and everything that's let's say relatively illegal is exposed and i just want to say really quickly i have a theory called the age of transparency we are moving into this topic transparency you know what it means it means that with wiki leaks it started 12 years ago with living in a being on shanghai on the 98th floor of a building my hotel room is only glass between me and all of shanghai i can stand and lean on the glass that's transparent so from a physical metaphysical and
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a how can i say a spiritual level everything we're going to move into this real honesty the other day a massive corporation i wanted to speak to the president the c.e.o. i googled who is linked in linked in i got his email address i sent them an email he says. this is the new world this world that this democratic world empowers each and every one of us creatively we all have a voice we all can this seminar our our being our existence and in the digital age . age we're all free no borders no boundaries and we are equal why do we see more wells and raising out where this is and for exactly that and where exactly does it go and metaphysical. in the last 40 years we have something like 32 new countries you know that 3032 new countries the last 30 why the fear the fear that since this the digital age is borderless and bound if we're going to become nationalistic or
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patriotic because we're afraid we're fraid we're losing something so people are becoming more fanatic religions are becoming more fanatic borders and boundaries are closing and it's only now because it's temporary because right now is the this moment i think the schism between 100000 years of digital i mean god analog and 40 years of digital so it's only the beginning when you say 100 years from now it may happen great so you know my daughter 6 and a half 4 maybe she'll because an average human being can live to 120 maybe she'll see that change but my my i know what's going to happen with this world my feeling with this world this right now is we're so confused and fearful and there's a certain generation that's controlling all the politics around the world still when that generation dies off and children that are brought up in this new freedom who really are less materialistic don't really care about these things don't really even want automobiles want to live right beside their job want to ride
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a bicycle this movement is global and it's going the world is going to cost to go with the star rection and it's going to change the current we're going to take a short break right now when we're back we'll continue talking to kareen rasheda one of they must iconic designers of our time stay with us. this is kaiser report coming here from an undisclosed bunker in the middle of nowhere to get ready for the apocalypse in a zombie infestation and ilan must have a saltire together. creating a special kid something we can benefit at the minute of. the book to. the gulf where. you thought the whole doping can russia think was over for get it.
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through a couple of. some of the models and give. russia methods eligibility for the international competition says that stake in this includes events like the tokyo olympics and the fee for world cup in qatar from i am of the. year when you come out of the just as it was 4 years ago the moscow anti-doping clad was at the center of the scandal so who tampered with the doping samples database and one does greegor you want to give have to do with it and you know. what it will start to pull me and you . will not use the push on the machine you will ship might expose me a little to.
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and we're back with karim rashid karim are we not going no one or feel or long for anything ever because for me oh very well reading a book smelling a book is priceless ok and no app on my smartphone will ever replace that and i know that if something catastrophic doesn't happen to the book my kids will smell it the same way and. my grandchildren will what's the app like to replace it every year and their smartphone or tablet or whatever disks they don't stay with you i don't see my grandchildren being oh this is the tablet of my grandfather or grandmother and you know what i mean yes so let me tell you something i just designed a mobile phone. it took 2 years it was on the market 8 months just now i want to open a shop to see the phone it's already gone and replaced the speed of this i agree
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with you you know what i design something in the digital age i almost like it's not i don't even get to really enjoy it so i design a chair in last 50 years you know it can be 100 years if it's a good chair so i guess i agree and then let me just say something as i design physical things so it's not like i'm so pro virtual and i want to go and you know float in space i love the physical world i love touching things i love smelling them i love feeling them i love hearing them i love it all i love to send story and when i design a hotel i worry about the smell of the hotel i worry about i work on the music of the hotel i do it all i love it right i'm a physical being like we are we love each other the skin and the smell and the touch and there's nothing better than holding somebody or hugging somebody this is not nature yes ok so i'm going on there but when you talk about history i would i have no problem going to the cairo museum and i see a folding chair from 3000 years ago huge before all these things are sacred and we
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should hang on to them but we don't need to copy and copy and copy and repeat them when they are now have no relevance so yeah i was in dubai all the buildings coming up in front of me are have these terrible kitsch fake neoclassical for thoughts what a shame building 3 huge skyscrapers that have nothing to do with dubai nothing to do with the context nothing to do with the age we live in nothing to do with the technologies of construction that we can do now or the software's of design you see . and when i'm designing a building in new york and the whole street is all brown brick little brown brick buildings and they're very upset of the building i'm going to do right and i was making a white and pink modernists think the whole neighborhood got very upset and they all signed a petition and i said to them all i stood and i had to bring all the neighbors together i had a talk and i showed the rendering and i said to them all 100 years ago when those brick buildings were dog it was state of the art technology the window at one time
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was only display so we made a grill frame to make more bigger windows then the window got that big today the windows from the floor and i can do it for meters one piece of cloth so why don't i use the technology of the day just like a 100 years ago the brick the brown brick was the technology of the time so all i'm saying is when you design new design with the criteria of today to shape the future . so that i make this whole the last box because that's the technology i can do today and maybe in 3050 years from now there's a better technology than the last box and then that will be the next thing and that's the progress and evolution of humanity it doesn't mean to say that some of those brick buildings shouldn't be retained if they're beautiful and they speak about an error like you go to london the buildings are immaculate from 17th century 1819 so do you think of the red phone booths in london will be. reproduced in the future all know as you know no but they can put one in
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a museum in the gallery we know what we can read about them we can know about the history of them you know even books or the physical things you talk about even if one day they're not books around they'll be books around meaning that we can hang onto books as like a sculpture like art or like something you have on your wall or you have a piece of jewelry from your great grandmother on your finger these are beautiful things they're stay speak about history they speak about our traditions our culture but there's no need to take that ring and make a face. and this is the problem i think a lot of the world is what you know the german word kitsch and kitsch by definition right is a cheap replica of the original why you make cheap replicas of the original that the original retain itself stand be beautiful just those are about things from which were designed and sure sign you up plastic is that it's very agile it's the thing of the future it's democratic where you can make cheap things
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like that but now we see like everyone going from plastic bottles to glass laurels from plastic bags to paper bags and everyone wants everything and would instead of plastic why do you still believe so much in plastic what is it about plastic that you know resonates in you in a future. well you have to my history is that when i was designing it in the early eighty's in order to make a nice teakettle or electric kettle i mean or electric drill i did for black and decker or a garbage can these things had to be in order to produce some cheap enough for a majority of people so plastic broad of a lot yes i could change this world in the last 150 years at the same time we didn't know enough about it it hadn't been around long enough for us to know the what's the word i'm looking for the. the pollution issues the have all the patients but the results of what what what these things are going to do to us the contamination etc toxins all this so often side effects so we could know these
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things so with that said now we now know have a lot of knowledge about it yes at the same time there's a polymers out there that are amazing they can do amazing things that are recyclable for ever there's polymers for example recently that are used to arrive from sugar to create polyethylene we used to take oil go through 7 stages to get to all the other me you take sugarcane you go to ethanol goes to all the other mean in 3 stages. don't eat sugar grows rapidly it's not a food source in fact it's created diabetes and obesity and heart attacks it's and we never ate sugar up till 240 years ago we fruit and vegetables so great you can make pasta cannot now think about the world we live in i mean the hospital and 7080 percent of the things in the hospital are polymer plastics the artificial hearts plastic we could go on and on you know contact lenses plastic that plastics serve an amazing role and changed humanity the problem was we didn't know what was the
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good plastic versus the bad plastic we didn't focus on making plastics that are biodegradable. you know so now i use a lot of. the famous garbage can 25 years ago and it sold like i don't know 15000000 now it's in by a great degradable finally because the companies that are producing these things only really started the rigorous development of these things 15 years ago and even now the price points these rare a good polymers that we can save the planet are more expensive than the oil derived . once the price comes down it's like buying organic milk versus regular milk once the price starts to match closer more of the companies which they should be using anyway this should be a mandate we'll be using those biodegradable polymers so we will still have beautiful organics all human things that are democratic cheap but they'll be all
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by degradable and that's the evolution next in the next 20 years this was going to happen all of these plastics around us would be able to cry and up into the soil and of glass and paper and wood coming back is just a trend no no no no it's enough for a lot of other reasons a lot of the palms we've created that are talks that are giving off gases and are dangerous you know i take m.d.f. which is a fiber board it's used in furniture the the glue this m.d.f. together is. meaning if a person is toxic and it gives off gas in your home. so the ikea's of the world and all these people making knock down furniture everybody's like living with a bunch of dangerous talks and the carpets are emitting the polyurethane out of a lot of the furniture it's all admitting these are all polymers you know so we all of a sudden are getting cancer a rapid rate of cancer you know it's one out of 3 in america one other foreign western europe it's crazy 100 years ago it was one out of 300 in america was
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getting cancer you know so something's wrong right so all these polymers have contributed to a really dangerous planet so we need to go back to glass because they were not drinking out of a plastic bottle right which by the way we have to stop either everywhere i go it's crazy every hotel everywhere. it was nice i got a paper cup with water in it you know so we have a lot of problems that we're solving you know and there's a lot of companies and a lot of amazing i would say amazing people out there and i know that are aggressively making huge changes to this kind of toxic environment that we've created kermit was such a pleasure talking to you and i wish all the walk and yes they're showing right now we're not. 3rd time it was great talking to you to your amazing me thank you so much being pushed thank you and with all your future endeavors thank you thank you . what did i do why do you want to why you.
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can't. facebook and google started with a great idea and great ideals unfortunately it was also a very dark so. they are constructing a profile of you and that profile is a real it's detailed and it never goes away turns out that google is manipulating your opinions from the very 1st character that you type into the search bar it will always favor one dog food over another one comparative shopping service over
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another and one candidate over another they can suppress certain types of results diced on what they think you should be see if they have this kind of power then democracy is an illusion the free and fair election doesn't exist for the more growth we give them the sooner we all know. what hopes and hands to. be put themselves on the line to get accepted or rejected . so when you want to be president and you. want to. have to go right to the press this is what the before 3 in the morning can't be good. i'm interested always in the waters in the. west. the economic system known as capitalism has generated more wealth than any other
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system in history in many ways it is defined maternity itself hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty however capitalism has also witnessed growing income inequality thus the appeal of socialism currently on. rise in calculus and. thinking of getting a new job on the ones we've gotten here she's known as he didn't know until he was trapped in this tiny little wired meeting near the crate with the wall just. freaking out and she will want to spray him anywhere near. breeding dogs or caged in inhumane conditions on puppy farms i mean 67 years you know they've been locked up in a cage outside you see no protection from the weather the heat you know the courtier the rain the snow the funder they have no protection. because when you. get through kids. across the u.s.
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cruel puppy mills are supported by dog shows and pet stores most of the puppies are coming from this large scale factory farming kind of operations are being sold in stores even joined a good businesses are involved like agoa mom sent up there has been a shocking amount of organized opposition to adverts to increase the standards of care for dogs bred in commercial breeding for so many most of that opposition is coming from huge agricultural groups and industries that have nothing to do with jobs don't buy dog. of the day that felt good that there's no.
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to it. the saudi air force a member opened fire at a u.s. naval base in florida killing 3 f.b.i. has reportedly opened a terror related investigation. a member of the populist alternative for germany party says extremists have threatened to assassinate her claiming the baby even left a crossing with the predicted time of her death written on a. u.k. alzheimer's society demands a christmas party by british cartoonists of modern tossed be removed from sale they have blasted the card which mocks those with the disease as utterly inappropriate. criminal and brings you all the latest next hour coming up capitalism has generated untold wealth but.
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