Karim Rashid launches design and development firm Kurv Architecture
New York designer Karim Rashid has teamed up with architect Alex Hughes to launch an architecture and development firm that offers comprehensive property design, from foundations to artwork.
Manhattan-based Kurv Architecture will provide multidisciplinary services for residential projects across New York City.
"Our company's role and mission is to apply our collective knowledge of and experience with the worlds of real estate, architecture, interiors, industrial manufacturing, construction, and digital technology onto new ideas and experiences for better buildings and better development," said Rashid.
The Canadian-American is a prolific designer that has over 3,000 products currently in production, with brands like Alessi, Pepsi and Artemide.
He has also completed a host of interiors – including a Dubai restaurant and a Munich sex shop – all in his signature colourful and curvaceous style.
Working with Hughes, his studio's head of interior design and a registered architect, Rashid hopes to apply experience across these fields to holistic developments, at all scales and stages.
"We are unique in our multidisciplinary approach because we are involved in the production of the entirety of a building's integrated components, from foundations and superstructure to the final art that hangs on the wall," Hughes said.
The new firm's projects include 30 Thompson Street – a residential building in SoHo for which Rashid asked his Facebook fans to select their preferred option from four facades in June 2015.
Properties at 329 Pleasant Avenue and 665 West 187th Street – both currently under construction – as well as proposals for 215 West 28th Street and 1655 Madison Avenue fill out Kurv's portfolio.
Designers moving into architecture became a contentious topic a couple of years ago.
Marcel Wanders, Piet Hein Eek and Dror Benshetrit all weighed in on the subject after they and other non-architects, including Thomas Heatherwick and Maarten Baas, were criticised by some in the architecture community for revealing plans for buildings.