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Ive never heard of this Karim Rashid guy, but i think this is a very clever and aesthetically pleasing work of art. And i dont understand the “difficulty of manufacture” argument. Most “new” or innovative items are difficult to manufacture by the sheer aspect that they arent being made one the same decades year old production lines that crank out the common plastic crap you see in every store. If something is to be manufactured, and it fits within actual physical material tolerances, then it will be manufactured, the means of manufacturing will expand to permit it. If every new object must only fit within what is cheap and easy, then there will be no innovation. And of the hundred or so items i have seen showcased on this site in the past couple of days, this is the first one where “recycleability” is a point of contention, even though many many of the other products might not be made of recyclable materials or even contain harmful chemicals common to electronic devices, which, i might add, due to the fact that they become obsolete quickly, MUST be much more recyclable than furniture. I have pieces of furniture in my house that are 20-30 years old. And if i want to get rid of furniture, i dont send it away to be melted down and sold back to me by some huge company, i give it away to someone else who needs or wants it.

Its become chic to obsess over being eco-friendly, and yet people focus almost soley on the least efficient, least eco-friendly, most energy intensive of the “three R’s”. Reduce and Reuse, and when you cant do either, THEN Recycle.

People that buy it, will buy it for the name or the strangeness, their not going to want to throw it away in 3 years. It’s NOT a consumable. Unlike consumer electronics. It’s not going to break in 3 years either.

It’s basically a sculptural piece of art. not a mass produced item.

So it’s entirely pointless to even consider recycling of the product.

No one’s gonna try and pull apart the mona lisa, just because it’s old and boring now. It’s value lies in the name and the piece itself, not it’s function.

I hate that most designers don’t really bother to think about what their told. Wer’e told that we should be looking to recycle products, but when a product comes along, doesn’t suit the criteria of “CONSUMABLES”, u mount the same argument.

Does a traditional samurai sword need to be made to be recycled? What about all products that come with a lifetime guarantee? Or things like a Rolex watch? Or Sidchrome tools? When you break them, they will replace them for free, because there supposed to last forever and shouldn’t break.

All of these products aren’t things your likely to see end up in landfill!

Designers are meant to use their brains and common sense.

Take away the Rashid name tag and do you still like it? Does Karim dine out again on his name? Is this his best piece to date?

Undoubtedly this man has done some great great products, but you are only as good as your last piece of work. Are Starck and Newson as good as they were or just riding out their names? id hate to see Karim ‘the breath of fresh air’ Rashid fall foul of the same mistake others have made.

While I totally agree that karim is a hack and I hate most of his work, the reality is that this is less product design and more sculptural, which lends itself towards high cost, inefficient manufacturing process and a talking piece.

It is very elitist, but it is what it is. And possibly the 10 people in the world that eventually will own it, will treasure it more than the 100,000 that will own an ikea table.

It’s not going to break after 10-20 years, so it’s not a product that needs to be designed to be recyclable.

It just doesn’t fit any of the categories of product design, so there is just no reason to compare it to mass produced items, nor design.

It says “fluid form of Dupont Corian” , obviously thats a rare treatment for corian, because mostly it comes in sheets, but it didn’t start out as sheets of corian, so there just using the raw material. Think along the lines of resin molds.

Just because it’s super difficult and time consuming doesn’t mean that it can’t be manufactured.

Sure. it would be pretty bloody hard to injection mold a large form like that, but it would never be injection molded. It’s too big, too expensive and too “out there” that it wouldn’t warrant 5,000,000 copies.

Think more like max 5000 and realistically 250-500 at best.

One of my lecturers from uni has the skills to do this sort of crap, and with some careful advice from Dupont, I’m sure you wouldn’t have any issues in making it work.