The next time you use a wastepaper basket or drink from a water bottle, consider the person who designed these items. Consider kareem rashid. You know his clients, companies such as 3m, coca-cola, disney, and dirt devil. Here he is, on his array of projects. I designed televisions for samsung and laptops for a zeus, and for an italian company, for italian companies, furnishings. I have done things like the bubble. It is a bottle with an integral filter in it. I have done a lot of packaging over the years. I designed a perfume bottle for kenzo. David off, quite a few projects in the world. In a way, my work has gone from what i call micro to macro. Everything from flatware and what we call industrial design, products of everyday life, all the way over to building. It is important for you to connect the use of the individual with whatever the big design theme is. There is a misconception that design is style. But it is not really style. It is about making life better, about solving solutions. It is a plethora of issues. It is for you and i too have a better life. That is the revolution. 175 years later, we have amazing products around us. We do not even realize how fortunate we are to have things so inexpensive, so inaccessible, and so disposable. When i started doing interiors about 15 years ago -- i have done about 200 interiors around the world. Restaurants, hotels. Plastic surgery, a dentists office, broad typologies. But with buildings, because it is relatively new to me -- 10 years ago, i did a small building in athens. It was basically just a box. I did not know what i was doing and it was very low budget. I did a low-budget hotel in bremen, germany that is a beautiful box, but the interior is fantastic. It is a budget hotel you pay 39 euro to stay in, a fantastic approach. With these buildings i am doing here in new york and in miami, i am analyzing the way we live. There are two ways to do a design. You can address existing behaviors or shape new behaviors. I am thinking about how stores work, and apartment. In new york, there is so little storage and it is frustrating for people. I am thinking about the upper part of your space. That should be storage, because you do not use upper parts of your interior environment. I am trying to reanalyze the flexibility, getting walls moved a little bit. If i live alone in a one-bedroom, it can be one big apartment, but i can close down the bedroom if i really want privacy. Things of that nature that allow more flexibility. The other part is to rethink materials, which i am enjoying. Three of the buildings are real what i would call budget, entry-level buildings. For young people who may be just got married, or people with lower incomes that want to still live in new york and have something really well designed. I think this will be the first time in new york, and i swear by it actually, that when they are built, it will be the first time people will see superhigh design about social behavior, not just aesthetic. Superhigh design and a good price point. Those are three projects we are doing in harlem, and i think it will shake things up a lot. My budget is so tight i am sticking with and finding really innovative materials, innovative technologies, that are lower priced than what we would use conventionally. I will give you an example. Every condominium, almost, in almost every city in north america, they put wood floors. That is $20,000. it is not cheap. The question is, why wood? Even more so for commercial been residential, it scratches quickly and easily. It has become like the 50's, this idea that would represent something. It is this association we cannot seem to let go of. The reality is, it is a good material, but not for a floor. I am shifting materials. All the companies are having this biodegradable material. A panel system of flooring that i can print graphics on. All the floors would be these subtle, really nice textures and graphics. They will not be wood. The material is made from a wood dust that is biodegradable. Not only is it way cheaper, which makes apartments cheaper to buy, but it is far more innovative, and will last beautifully for years, much better than a wood floor would. What is your favorite movie? I saw a film coming back from china called "i origins." it is a fantastic film about a  This text has been automatically generated. It may not be 100% accurate.
Industrial designer Karim Rashid discusses his recent projects and explains his approach to design. He speaks with Bloomberg's Pimm Fox on "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)