Dieter Rams, the famed twentieth-century industrial designer best known for his work for German product and furniture heavyweights Braun and Vitsœ, holds over 350 iconic designs under his belt. It’s no surprise then, in our increasingly demanding and materialistic society holding limited resources from our natural environment, that Rams himself continues to question the role and impact of design to this day.

Currently on view at the Museum Angewandte Kunst, the exhibition Dieter Rams: Looking Back and Ahead deconstructs Rams’ design ethos that was embedded with an environmental and societal responsibility guided by the aesthetics of function, and not vice versa. Leading with his now-iconic ethos of “less, but better”, Rams was driven to design objects led by longevity. He previously noted, “Good design is environmentally friendly. Design makes an important contribution towards preserving the environment. Saving resources and minimizing physical and visual pollution are thus encompassed by product design.”

Curated by Dr. Klaus Klemp together with the Dieter Rams Archive, the exhibition presents over thirty works selected by Rams himself, alongside over a hundred photographs, reproductions and texts that aim to uncover how design can better impact our future. Rams asks, “How should we continue to design our world, so that it can survive?”