Bernd Grimm

Bernd Grimm (born 1962) is a German product designer, architectural model builder and artist. He became known through the creation of architectural models of historical and antique buildings. Ten of his models belong to the collection of the architectural icons of the architect Oswald Mathias Ungers. Grimm was born in Ellwangen an der Jagst, Germany. He studied Industrial Design from 1983 to 1989 at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg with Lambert Rosenbusch and graduated as a designer. During his studies he developed an interest in the field of architectural theory. Together with his fellow student Jan Christophe Kraege, he carried out scientific research on historical buildings such as the Temple of Clitumnus near Spoleto (1985) and produced a model of it. He also investigated the functionality of the proportional compass developed by Balthasar Neumann. During his studies, the German Archaeological Institute commissioned him to create a model of the Temple of Mars Ultor at the Forum of Augustus in Rome (1987). After completing his studies, Grimm worked from 1990 to 2007 as a free-lance designer in the architectural office of Oswald Mathias Ungers, where he was responsible for the creation of architectural models of historically significant buildings. The idea was to create a kind of "three-dimensional collection". Over the years, ten architectural icons of the Ungers Collection were created, which Grimm produced after intensive research from Alabaster gypsum. The model thus becomes a high-quality cultural item. From 2007 until Grimm was the artistic director of Oswald Mathias Ungers Archive for Architectural Research. From 2012 to 2014 he was an academic staff member at the Atelier Gerhard Richter in Cologne. In 2015 he received a practical scholarship of the Villa Massimo in Rome. My models depict abstraction: they do not show buildings, but pure ideas. (in German: Meine Modelle abstrahieren: sie zeigen keine Bauten, sondern die reine Idee.) Architectural models can perform various functions.