As you step out of the cold rain and through the door of Raven Row you are welcomed with a quaint, cosy, simplistic exhibition centre perfect for viewing beautiful pieces of art. If you had done your research on the Ulm School this is about the time you’d notice the irony of this as a big part of their belief is that “design is not art”.
Based in southern Germany, the Ulm School of Design (Hochschule für Gestating Ulm) was founded by Max Bill, Inge Aicher-Scholl, and Otl Aicher in 1953. It was only operating for 15 years but made quite the impression during this time. The school rejected the term “artist” for their designers as they were all about the functionality of designs, taking less consideration of aesthetic. The pieces designed by students of the Ulm School are as relevant and striking now, maybe even more so, as they were then. Operations ended in 1968 after conflict over the school’s curriculum and their funding had been withdrawn.
The main thing that I noticed whilst walking in and out of several product filled rooms was that there was not enough explanation of each piece, which would have made the exhibition rather bland and confusing for the people who had not read up on the subject before coming to view the works. From the point of view of a non designer I don’t think the exhibit would have been a complete success, even though there were several spectacular pieces that spoke for themselves for example the Braun audio products, my personal favourite being the record player table.
Peter Kapos did an absolutely stunning job curating the exhibition, he managed to create a context for so many of the pieces, making the centre feel like a home from the first floor up.
rebeccawoodgmd 
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