World-famous designer Karim Rashid predicts making love with robots

Welcome to Prague, Czech Republic. I know you’re not a first time here, Karim Rashid, and I would like to ask you, when you came here first time, what surprised you the most and when it was?

Probably the people more than the place. Meaning the energy of the people and the positiveness and the desire and need to create. That’s what I feel from Czechs.

That’s nice, thank you. What are the three reasons to buy iQOS? Electronic cigarettes.

Well, if you’re a smoker, you’re going to help your body and lungs by buying IQOS, number one. So, it’s much healthier. Number two is that it doesn’t produce smoke to destroy our environment, which I think is excellent. And the number three is, I think it’s a Segway for Philip Morris, a giant of a company ready to move to doing something better for the humanity really and that the cigarette industry will disappear, you know. So, that’s I think the three reasons.

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I read your favourite colours in dress code is white and pink, why? And another question, which colour you would never wear?

I’d probably never wear red, I don’t really like the colour red, but because you add white to it it somehow becomes much more passionate, and more poetic, and more feminine, more, I don’t know, positive colour, you know. Red is not necessarily positive, you know, pink is. White is nice, because I feel little bit angelic and I feel free.

Do you feel freedom in the Czech Republic? How you feel yourself in this country?

That’s interesting, I don’t know. I mean I always feel free no matter where I am, but you know, but there is a lot of political turmaltuousness??? in the world too. You know, there are many countries that are not that free and it’s hard for me to relate, I understand history of a lot of places, but I also think that digital age has afforded everybody a certain amount of freedom. So, the digital age has no boundaries and borders, so even if one lives in constraint condition, they’re really now a part of the entire globe, you know. And I think also we completely surpassed communism, I mean it’s long, long gone. Even real kind of pro-socialist countries are kind of disappearing, and I think the world is becoming more of a borderless place of democracy in a way. And I mean democracy in the true sense of the world, not the South American agenda or other, but the real democracy that we all around this planet can go and be and think the way we would like, you know.

And maybe, I don’t know if you know, but maybe you were asked before and this year there is the hundred years since first Czech Republic. So, it is a certain anniversary, and I would like to ask you what do you think people would wear in hundred years in the future?

In a hundred years I think we’re gonna have a nano polymer, liquid crystal polymer nano thin that‘d spray on your body, so we won’t have clothes. So, when you wake up in the morning while taking a shower it sprays and then you can fire up any colour, any image, any moving image, I think that’s … and I don’t think that’s a hundred years from now, I think its thirty years from now.

Amazing idea, very impressed.

I’ve been twenty-five years thinking about this idea. And you know what the funny thing is? Because inevitably we would be all naked. So, she has a nice body, so she would probably look good. Some very big people may not look that good, but the beauty of it is that we all will start get used to the fact that this is the reality of humanity

Of course, she looks good she is a Czech girl.

Anyway, but we’re all different shapes and we would finally understand that it’s us human beings, you know, there are no two alike, right? And I think it would be more free in a way.

They call you the king of plastic, because you are working …

I used to be a prince

Yeah, a prince and king of plastic … because you’re working with artificial materials when you are creating …

Year, all the plastics I’m working with now over the world are now biodegradable, so they completely can disintegrate in the earth in three weeks or a in month. So, … we, we, polymers, first of all, of our built-in environment, about 75% of our built-in environment is plastic, ok? Down from our clothing to our toothpaste, to everything in hospitals that we need to make operations, it’s just ongoing. So, take our food … it’s not like overnight we can get rid of plastic, but the solution is, a temporary solution at least, is to make polymer that are responsible. Either ones that can be recycled forever, or use polymers that are biodegradable, you know, and I think that’s the future of this. I was called the prince of plastic or king of plastic, that was twenty years ago, right, and now sometimes it carries a lot of baggage. It’s as if I’m the culprit. I’m not the culprit of the plastic age, I didn’t start it, you know. But I do not that the greatest thing is that we managed to make very democratic inexpensive things that are accessible to a lot of people and change a lot of peoples‘ lives with plastic.

Are you living waste free?

I’m not waste free but I’m close I’m very close to it, but not all the way, no. In America the problem is you can be so accurate recycling and doing everything perfectly but wherever it goes once it’s picked up by the truck, you don’t have control over, you know. The most waste free country in the world, do you know what it is? It’s Finland. They recycle 87% of all their waste matter. 87. And the second is Sweden 83% of all their waste matter. I think the world should look at those two countries and study them and imitate that criteria.

Back to technology. Making love with a robot. Yes or no?

Making love with robot, yes or no? Sure, I would make love with a robot, why not. Better than masturbating.

What is your next challenge in your life?

Next challenge. To design a robot that I can have sex with.

Thank you very much, you are great.