Zeev Aram

Zeev Aram was born in 1931 in Cluj-Napoca

Zeev Aram was born in Cluj, Romania, to Jewish hoteliers Palma and Aaron Ungar. In 1940, after World War II broke out, the family moved to Mandatory Palestine, where he grew up.

He first served as an officer in the Israeli Navy and then chose to study architecture. The architecture course in Haifa had a long waiting list, so in 1957 he went to London. He studied furniture and interior design at the Central School of Art and Design.

He worked for the architects Ernő Goldfinger, Basil Spence and Andrew Renton. In 1964 he opened Aram Designs Ltd on King's Road, Chelsea, and brought modernist designers such as Marcel Breuer, Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier to the UK market. In 1973 the store moved to Covent Garden, and Eileen Gray gave him the worldwide license to produce and distribute her designs.

He also directed the Aram Gallery, which showed experimental design and graduate work by designers such as Thomas Heatherwick and Jasper Morrison. His own designs include the Dino Storage System, the Altra Table System and the Atlantic Desk. In 2014 he received an OBE for services to design and architecture.

In 1958 he married Elizabeth Bunzl, and they had 4 children. He died on 18 March 2021 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery.