Hani Rashid is quite well known for being the co-founder of one of the most audacious and creative design and architecture practices in New York. His
firm Asymptote was established with
partner Lise Anne Couture in 1989. The name means a line that strays in a curve without ever meeting itself or another lien again.
Rashid is a younger designer that was born in the sixties and he has consistently been at the leading edge when it comes to the development of products, exhibition concepts, digital enviroments, master plans and building designs. Time Magazine named Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture as being two of the most important designers of the new century.
You probably would recognize the influence of Hani Rashid in your own home. If you own a plastic garbage pail with fluid lines and handles in a pastel color such as lavender or lime green then you own a Hani Rashid design or at least one influenced by him. Plastic candy colors are a real hallmark of his furniture and product designs. He has designed many products for the company Ombre including the famous $50 Oh chair which is oval shaped with holes in the back.
Hani Rashid has many achievements and he is one of the few architects that seems to be an equal balance of both theory and accomplishment. In 2000 he represented the U.S. at the 7th Venice Architecture Biennale and in 2004 he was awarded the Chair of the Catedra Luis Barragan in Monterrey Mexico. That same year both Rashid and Couture were awarded the important Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and Art at the 9th Venice Architecture Biennelle in recognition of their unique ability to merge art with architecture. This was in recognition as well of Rashid’s long legacy of putting forth incredibly advanced concepts when it comes to developing virtual rooms and buildings such as his ever expanding Victorian style Guggenheim project which has no walls, no rooms and no limitations.
When it comes to pouring hard concrete to create one of a kind architectural masterpieces Asymptote is currently working on a broad range of commissions at sites in the United States, Europe and Asia including The Penang Global City Center which is a hotel and performing arts center in Penang Malaysia and two contemporary art pavilions commissioned by the Guggenheim Foundation for the Cultural District of Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi UAE. The company is also working on a design for the Dubai International Financial Center, which are a 146 story futuristic building as well as an addition Guggenheim Museum to be constructed in Guadalajara, Mexico.
Other projects by Hani Rashid and his partner included several different housing developments including ones in the Czech Republic, the United Arab Emirates and New York City. The youth and the popularity of this company has made their designs in demand internationally.
Although Hani Rashid and his partner have always been known for their excellence in building design they also have a distinguished yet renegade reputation as artists. The firm has produced high experimental art installations that make artistic use of digital media at such venues as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Documental X! in Kassel Germany, the Shirn Kunstahlle in Frankfurt and the Ministry of Public Works in Madrid.
Asymptote’s work has been widely published and curate is included in various private and public collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Pinothek in Munich, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Franc Centre in Orleans, France.
Hani Rashid was born in Eygpt and raised in Canada along with his brother Kareem who is also a celebrity archtitect and designer in New York. He received his bachelor of architecture degree in 1983 from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada and an M.A. in architecture 1985 from the Cranbrook academy of art in the United States.
Rashind’s stellar academic career has included visiting professorships at numerous universities including the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture in Copenhagen, the Southern California Institute of Architecture (in Los Angeles, the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and the Berlage Institute in Amsterdam and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.
Since 1989, Hanoi Rashid has been an Associate Professor of Architecture at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation where he co-developed many of the school’s more progressive design programs.
At present Hani Rashid also holds the prestige Kenzo Tange chair for architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
- url: 
1.888.567.2228
