“Who needs this rubbish?” That’s the reaction Zeev Aram remembers window shoppers having to his first store on the Kings Road. His first shop, opened in 1964, specialised in modern European furniture, including Castiglioni, Breuer, and Le Corbusier. At the time – a few months before Habitat opened down the road – the clean, spare lines and modern materials of these designs shocked the typical British consumer, even in Chelsea, and it was described dismissively as ‘hospital furniture’.

This year Aram, the store Zeev established is, celebrating 50 years as a fixture in London’s buzzing design scene. Now housed in a large, multi-storey warehouse-style space in Covent Garden, the shop is marking this birthday with a whole year of celebrations. The beautiful showroom has a gallery space on the top floor, which hosts regularly-changing exhibitions, imaginatively curated by Héloïse Parke. At the moment, until 25 October, you can see their annual Future Stars exhibition, with the work of seven hand-picked up-and-coming designers in furniture, product and jewellery showing their work.

Best of all is the Aram 50th Anniversary Library, a project running for the whole of this year. Aram have invited 50 friends and collaborators from the design world to each pick one book that has influenced them in their lives or careers. The whole collection is open to the public to browse until the end of the year, at which point it will be donated to a design school. Contributors include journalists like Lucia van der Post who wrote about the store in the early days and designers including Thomas Heatherwick, Luke Pearson and Tom Lloyd who have been shown at the store since the start of their careers.

If you think 50 design books sounds a little dry, the reality is that the choices are often delightfully personal. “There was none of this, ‘I must select something that is going to make me look intelligent,'” said curator Héloïse in a recent interview with Disegno magazine. “Snoopy in Fashion for instance is a book nominated by Wakako Kishimoto from Eley Kishimoto. Not to suggest that that’s not an intelligent selection, but it’s one that is based very sincerely on her practice. She saw that book in the 80s and it made her think she’d be a fashion designer because it looked fun. That’s it. It is sometimes easy to over intellectualise, but it’s nice that there is a playfulness to it.”

You’ve got until the end of the year to stop by the store and check out the choices for yourself – the best thing is you’re free to thumb through them too! And you can read more about the story of Aram, including Zeev Aram’s own training with Trellick Tower architect Erno Goldfinger, on their website.

This post was written in collaboration with Aram.