Karim Rashid Guest Curates at the Museum of Arts and Design
Design-savvy radiators take center stage in the inaugural exhibition of the museum's Design and Innovation Gallery.
Sheila Kim -- Interior Design, 2/14/2009 10:09:00 AM
From left: Caleido's Rain, 2007; Caleido's Honey, 2006; both images courtesy of Caleido.
Things heat up at New York's Museum of Arts and Design with an exhibition curated by celebrated designer Karim Rashid. "Totally Rad: Karim Rashid Does Radiators" explores innovation in transforming the mundane heating appliance, which previously used to be concealed or decorated with embellishments, into visually intriguing sculptures and elements of interior architecture that can stand on their own. Opening on March 4, the show also inaugurates the museum's Design and Innovation Gallery, a second-floor space that will house short-term, guest curated exhibitions examining emerging trends in design.
Klobs, 2006, designed by Karim Rashid for Hellos; image courtesy of Hellos.
"I have affection for typologies that were considered highly banal: garbage cans, light switches, manhole covers, radiators," says Rashid, who's previously designed everything from interiors for restaurants to handheld vacuum cleaners. "I refer to these sacred untouched areas as the last product design frontiers. In this terrain, [manufacturers and industrial designers] bring new heightened aesthetics, higher performance, and more fluid poetics, while touching and reshaping an object that was once considered utilitarian."
Arabesque, 2006, designed by Ron Arad for Hellos; image courtesy of Hellos.
To demonstrate this view, Rashid has selected some 30 edgy steam-heat designs that are currently in production, including his own blob-like Klobs, an aluminum radiator manufactured by Hellos. Also produced by Hellos, Ron Arad's Arabesque, as its name suggests, sports intertwining lines composed of steel. Meanwhile, Studio Dell'Acqua Bellavitis's Bambu, manufactured by Deltacalor, evokes imagery of bamboo swaying in the wind via upright steel tubes that are gently curved. Other show highlights include Runtal's Puzzle, Caleido's Rain, and Antrax's Moon.
Bambu, 2006, designed by Studio Dell'Acqua Bellavitis for Deltacalor; image courtesy of Deltacalor.
Totally Rad will be on view through May 17.
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
