“What seems to distinguish her, above all, is something that probably has nothing to do with her training, architectural or otherwise. It is her unerring taste.” – profile in New York Times, 1964, by Virginia Lee Warren.

As a female president, she was a trailblazer for other women, not only at Knoll, but across the country

From its founding in the late 1938, Knoll has exerted a profound influence on the modern interior through the design and production of furniture and textiles and through its interior design service for private and corporate clients.

Florence Knoll Bassett established herself as one of the most influential American interior planners and designers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Florence Knoll Bassett is one of a generation of designers who had a democratic and social understanding of design.

At a time when resources were scarce, she did more with less and found inventive solutions out of necessity.

Her belief in “total design”—architecture, manufacturing, interior design, furniture, textiles, graphics, advertising and presentation—meant that she integrated all aspects of spatial planning, furnishing, and decorating into one seamless package.

Her application of design principles in solving space-planning problems were radical departures from the standard practice in the 1950s, but were quickly adopted and remain widely used today

She believed that good design “strikes at the root of living requirements and changing habits.”

Florence Knoll changed the world’s conception of how to decorate an office space with her innovative, art-centered and Bauhaus-inspired notions about functional design

The Knoll Planning Unit (1943–71), the interior design service of Knoll Associates, defined the standard for the modern corporate interiors of post-war America and was responsible for some of the most innovative corporate interior design during that period

She taught corporate executives that a desk could be light and approachable, serving its purpose without looking like a carved mahogany fortress.

Florence Knoll Bassett’s sleek, modern, and functional designs still resonate today, and are considered classics by admirers around the world. In all aspects of design, from furniture to her archives, she has fixed her legacy as an American taste-maker.

Planning Unit

Florence Knoll directed the interior design service of Knoll Associates, The Knoll Planning Unit (1943–1971).

The Planning Unit was directed by Florence Knoll, who trained as an architect and designed buildings, interiors, furniture and textiles over the course of her career.

Drawing on her background in architecture, she introduced modern notions of efficiency, space planning, and comprehensive design to office planning.

Florence ardently maintained that she did not merely decorate space. She created it.

Florence and the Planning Unit were responsible for the interiors of some of America’s largest corporations, including IBM, GM and CBS.

The Planning Unit rigorously researched and surveyed each client — assessing their needs, defining patterns of use and understanding company hierarchies — before presenting a comprehensive design, informed by the principles of modernism and beautifully executed in signature Knoll style.

With her attention to detail, eye for proportion, and command of the modern aesthetic, many of her designs have become as revered and celebrated as those of her colleagues.

Florence Knoll was part of a movement to professionalize interior design in America and played a key role in defining the new field of interior design.

The offices she designed for the Planning Unit were distinguished by a humanized modernism which combined spare form with rich textures and vivid colour.

They showcased the Knoll look, a recognizable combination of furniture, colours and fabrics that became the trademark of Knoll design.

Through a combination of prestigious clients, astute promotion and skilled staff, Florence Knoll and the Knoll Planning Unit turned this corporate humanized modernism into a ubiquitous reality.

Knoll and the Planning Unit were important figures in the development of interior design from the 1940s to the 1970s.

They created some of the most innovative design for office interiors during the post-war period, largely due to Knoll’s rational thinking and humanized modernism ideas.

Florence knoll applied her architectural knowledge and techniques to the design of interior spaces.

For example, she used the architectural method of setting and solving design problems to create spaces with a unity of function and design, which met client needs.

The Planning Unit aimed to fuse architectural space and its contents by not only creating a consistent visual language of the modern office space, but also making it inhabitable and responsive to the changing needs of everyday living and working.

Knolls choice of furniture, textured fabrics and vibrant colour scheme (primary colours used against black, white and beige) not only became part of the Knoll look, they addressed the human desire for comfort, texture and colour.

However she did not want to be confused for an interior decorator, insisting ‘I am not a decorator… the only place I decorate is my own house,’ signifying the developing profession of interior designer during the 20th century.

This saw the move away from decorating rooms and towards designing.

Knoll and the Planning unit had a radical influence on American office environments, beginning by replacing the traditional heavy, carved mahogany desks with modern, lighter designs, as well as, straightening the common diagonal positioning of the executive’s desk.

“The traditional mid-century desk was an oblong box with many drawers and a table behind it that tended to become cluttered with paper.

Florence Knoll reversed this plan, creating a desk that could be used as a conference table and adding a credenza behind it for ample concealed storage.”

She redesigned conference tables into a boat-shape so that people could see one another to meet requirements for group discussions.

With her architectural training, she worked to create a space that made sense from the user’s standpoint — not to just decorate, but to design.

At the time, closed off spaces and richly carved executive desks placed on the diagonal were the norm — Florence has mentioned squaring off the desks was, at first, her biggest obstacle with clients.

Perhaps her largest contribution to the design of office space was the Introduction of open plan workstations, which offered clients advantages of cost and flexibility over traditional private offices.

This approach is still widely used today.

Florence Changed the Way the Design Industry Interacts

She set up the Knoll Planning Unit, which developed from her growing realization that, while clients might know very well what they needed, they were rarely able to communicate those needs.

She became one of the first in the interior design industry to have lengthy meetings with everyone involved in a project to try to tease out, not what each person thought would make his job more efficient, but which elements actually would make the job more efficient.

Three years later, the design duo married and founded what eventually became Knoll International

1951 – Knoll Planning Unit @ Knoll New York – shows a room with rows of cubicles, each with a drafting table.

On the reverse of the image above is a handwritten paragraph in Florence Knoll Bassett’s hand:

“The planning unit began when I joined Hans Knoll at 601 Madison. As the projects grew three or four designers were hired. In spite of the size of some of the projects like Connecticut General, the group never exceeded six to eight designers.

We somehow managed to get the job done and on time. I don’t think I could have worked with a larger group. Heino Orro, Joe Whited and Lou Butler were with the P.U. until I resigned in 1965.

Peter Andes, also a P.U. member called it “Shu U.”

Us other young designers were siphoned off by architectural firms who began to start their own interior design divisions. S.O.M. New York was the first after our collaboration when I was hired by Frazer Wilde of Connecticut General to do the interiors. He said he wanted an “independent voice.”

For herself, too, Florence saw Knoll as the perfect experimental design lab. She came up with unique ways to design the various Knoll offices so that they would be selling points for new clients.

1950’s

1960’s

1970’s

About Hans Knoll

A native of Stuttgart, Germany, Hans was the son of furniture manufacturer Walter C. Knoll, who made early Bauhaus furniture for Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the same three who ultimately came to play a role in Florence’s development.

Hans broke from his authoritarian father and started his own interior design company in England.

After moving to New York, he began the Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company in 1938.

Having been influenced not only by his father’s work but by the new wave of German industrial design in general, Knoll knew he wanted to make, as his father had, modern furniture for modern buildings.

Hans G Knoll soon earned a reputation for its progressive line of furniture.

The community of modernist designers was small and she met Hans Knoll.

Florence Schust began working as a part-time interior space planner for furniture designer and salesman Hans Knoll in 1943, when he offered her a project designing an office for Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

Both Florence and Hans had been immersed in the Bauhaus aesthetic and philosophy at an early age.

As the only woman in Knoll’s offices, she was the go-to person for interior design jobs.

The two soon found they had many ideas in common.

Both were infatuated with Bauhaus, certainly, which meant creating things that “represented design excellence, technological innovation and mass production,” as the company put it.

Still, Florence wasn’t crazy about the furniture Hans was offering.

She wanted to push it much further in a sculptural direction, and she also had some emerging ideas about the way space should be planned.

Hans, a charming and relentless salesman, took over the business aspects, opening manufacturing plants in rural Pennsylvania and offices throughout the country and worldwide, while Florence gradually took complete control of every aspect of the design, from the graphics of the company letterhead and business cards to the smallest details of a new client’s offices.

Hans Knoll ‘s own office design by Florence Knoll ( 1950 )

Florence saw Knoll as the perfect experimental design lab.

She came up with unique ways to design the various Knoll offices so that they would be selling points for new clients.

Florence Knoll sketch of Hans Knoll Office, 575 Madison Avenue, New York (1950).

For one of Hans’ offices, a 12 x 12-foot space, she painted the walls white except for the one behind Hans’ desk, which was matte black, and she used teak furniture and Indian silk curtains to “set off his blond hair and ruddy complexion.”

Once clients realized the actual dimensions of the space versus how large it seemed, they were sold.

Hans Knoll’s office as featured in Interiors Magazine 1951

Hans Knoll’s Death

Even though Florence Knoll Bassett left the professional design sphere in 1965, her approach to design as a practice still remains highly significant of a particular historical climate and should be reconsidered in the complex contemporary corporate design work.

In fact, speaking about her work, Mrs. Knoll Bassett says: “I was fortunate to have good clients. The success of a good project depends upon the compatibility of client and designer”.

Nevertheless, if you look back at her career you understand that it would have never happened without her dedication, profound knowledge and wit.

Paste Ups

knoll planning unit work space

The Planning Unit not only specified furniture models and arrangements but also corresponding textiles, carpets, window treatments and office accessories.

Knoll communicated and presented the designs of the Knoll Planning Unit through what she referred to as ‘paste-ups.’

She’d send drawings with little squares of (Knoll) fabric glued to the blueprints, just like the sketch below.

NB it was before e-mail and the internet – all Florence’s correspondence was hand-written and sent by FedEx.

The paste-ups were abstract and balanced, so if a large element such as a desk was placed on one side of the collage, it would be balanced by an element of a similar proportion such as a sofa at the opposite end of the board.

These collages convey the feeling of a space and proved to be an effective client presentation tool.

This technique was successful because it expressed the experience of a space more accurately than a drawing and was simple to understand.

The paste up was a small representational plan of the space with fabric swatches, wood chips and finishes attached to represent furniture and other details.

This communicated both the materiality and arrangement of sofas, chairs, desks and credenza.

Because texture was a significant element in Knoll’s designs, by placing samples of fabrics onto the paste-up board, she was able to visually and tactilely show her ideas which reinforced her vision for creating stimulating, humanised interiors

This communication method was vital in convincing clients to move towards modernised workspaces.

Paste-ups present a correspondence between their graphic elements and the spatial elements of furniture layouts, textures and colours of her complete office and showroom spaces.

Florence Knoll Products

She is  credited with elevating standards of furniture manufacture to a new level of quality.

Her exactitude could be frustrating for those who worked under her, but the result was worth it.

As part of her work with the Planning Unit, Florence frequently contributed furniture designs to the Knoll catalog.

With her attention to detail, eye for proportion, and command of the modern aesthetic, many of her designs have become as revered and celebrated as those of her colleagues.

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Heart-felt modernism perhaps best describes Knoll’s style.

Her pieces generally fitted into the International style – a post-Bauhaus doctrine favouring clean lines and the use of chromed metal.

She also used bright colours, textured fabrics and finishes such as marble and saddle leather.

Not only did Knoll revolutionise office planning from the ’40s to its peak in the ’60s, she also designed a huge number of furniture pieces between 1954 and 1961.

With her self-deprecating style, she did not attribute much importance to her own work. “I never considered myself a furniture designer, and still don’t,” she said in a 2001 interview. “It was really people like Saarinen and Bertoia who created very sculptural pieces. Mine were architectural.”

As skyscrapers rose up across America during the post-war boom, Florence Knoll saw it as her job to translate the vocabulary and rationale of the modern exterior to the interior space of the corporate office.

Thus, unlike Saarinen and Bertoia, her designs were architectural in foundation, not sculptural.

She scaled down the rhythm and details of modern architecture while humanizing them through color and texture.

Her lounge collection, designed in 1954, is a perfect example of her restrained, geometric approach to furniture, clearly derived from her favorite mentor, Mies van der Rohe

Although Knoll did a great deal of residential work, the International Style she worked in was especially successful in corporate offices.

She humbly referred to her furniture designs as the “meat and potatoes,” filler among the standout pieces of Bertoia, Mies, and Saarinen.

Florence herself was a credentialed architect, although she described the pieces that she designed (with a modesty that seems ludicrous given the fact that her pieces are now displayed in MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum, the Louvre and the Smithsonian) as “fill-ins” – cabinetry and such that was needed after the initial designs had been completed.

As a furniture designer, Knoll’s most famous pieces include 1954’s range of lounge seats, as well as the elegant Partner table desk and credenza from her 1961 Executive Collection, all of which are still in production by Knoll.

Florence was a strong proponent of considering all the elements of a space and the way they relate to one another, so when furniture in the current Knoll catalog didn’t work for a project, she designed something that did.

Iconic pieces like her credenza and boat-shaped conference table are examples of her commitment to that idea.

With Swiss graphic designer Herbert Matter, Knoll helped create a series of inventive print advertisements. ( see MATTER gallery posters )

As head of the Knoll Planning unit, Florence Knoll always approached furniture design with the larger space in mind.

Most important to her was how a piece fit into the greater design — the room, the floor, the building.

Every element of a Knoll-planned space supported the overall design and complemented the existing architecture.

Never one to compromise, Florence would often design furniture when she, “needed the piece of furniture for a job and it wasn’t there.”

And while she never regarded herself as a furniture designer, her quest for harmony of space and consistency of design led her to design several of Knoll’s most iconic pieces—all simple, none plain.

knoll bench images here

Knoll’s distinctive furniture designs (her signature bench is among several of her designs still in production today) were marked by sleek silhouettes and geometries that reflected her architectural training.

Knoll won four of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Good Design” competitions, and the company’s designs are still displayed today on MoMA’s top floor.

knoll credenza images here

Her American interpretation of minimalist rationalist design theories is clearly evident in Knoll’s storage pieces.

She mixed woods and metals to great effect and added laminates as they became popular.

Dressers and desks are all square in design but never lack for quality.

Hanging cabinets have glass shelves, sliding doors and drop down fronts that can be used as bars.

In the 1950s Florence Knoll’s work was often displayed at the Museum of Modern Art’s “Good Design” exhibits.

Florence Knoll stated that she was not a furniture designer, perhaps because she didn’t want her furniture pieces to be viewed on their own, but rather as an element of her holistic interior design

Knoll only designed furniture when the existing pieces in the Knoll collection didn’t meet her needs.

Almost half of the furniture pieces in the Knoll collection were her designs including tables, desks, chairs, sofas, benches and stools.

She designed furniture not only to be functional, but also to designate the way she wanted the interior space to function as well as relating to the architecture of the space and the overall composition.

This was inevitably part of her concept for ‘total design’ where she aspired to work in a broad range of design fields including architecture, manufacturing, interior design, textiles, graphics, advertising and presentation

The distinctive features of Florence Knoll’s furniture designs were the sleek silhouettes and geometries.

This reflected her architectural training and interests.

Her furniture was designed with the notion of transforming architecture into furniture, which she achieved by translating the structure and language of the modern building into a human-scaled object.

An ideal example of this is her 2544 credenza, which was a marble topped, rectangular case with metal legs.

Its structure was clearly influenced by the Mies’ Seagram Building and Corbusian columns.

She mostly kept the upholstery colour palate in black, brown and beige to let the vibrant colours and rich textures in the interior spaces remain the focus (some pieces did come in bright red).

This 1961 marble-top credenza was influenced by Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram Building and Corbusian columns.

Florence mixed woods and metals and incorporated laminates as they became more popular

Knoll Showrooms

knoll showroom 1945 601 Madison Ave New York 1945

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Florence designed regional showrooms in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and Milan – that fluently communicated the Knoll brand and showcased the company’s products with color and great modern style.

The Knoll showrooms embodied their humanised modern designs, showing the customers how to use their new furniture.

Their first showroom was opened in 1948 in New York followed by showrooms in Dallas, Chicago, San Francisco, Paris, Los Angeles and others

This 1954 Knoll showroom in San Francisco embodies the look she championed for modern office spaces: the lines are clean and spare, and textiles add life and vivid colour

These showrooms did not exhibit office interiors but rather living room and lounge arrangements to show different solutions in interior design through the Planning unit and Knoll furnishings.

Residential customers were more experimental in their colour, texture and shape selections of Knoll designs, whereas the corporate clients preferred more functional looking design.

Textiles Division

In 1947, the year after their marriage, Hans and Florence Knoll added a third division, Knoll Textiles, which brought textile production in line with a modern sensibility that used colour and texture as primary design elements.

In the early years, the company hired leading proponents of modern design as well as young, untried designers to create textile patterns.

The division thrived in the late 1940s through 1960s and, in the following decade, adopted a more international outlook as design direction shifted to Europe.

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Knoll tapped fashion designers and architects to bolster its brand.

The pioneering use of new materials and a commitment to innovative design have remained Knoll’s hallmarks to the present day

Knoll Associates also moved into furniture textiles in 1947 with a large range of fabrics using natural and man-made materials, including the classic Cato fabric in 1961

A feature of most 20th-century design collections, the “Womb” chair’s fabric, usually a Knoll textile and a dominant design element, is rarely, if ever, identified.

“In modern interior design, the role of the furniture designer is well documented, but the importance of the textiles on their furniture was never talked about,” Martin said.

The lack of recognition is perhaps partly attributable to the concentration of women in textile design.

“In the field of design, it was fairly characteristic for women to be pushed into textiles,” Martin explained.

With Schust as its director, Knoll’s Planning Unit was formed to create complete interiors, primarily for the commercial market.

Though the firm had experimented with textiles since 1942, it formally added textiles as a third division in 1947.

She was a driving force.

Florence Knoll was unusual in that she was, in terms of design, the head of the company in the 1940s and 1950s, she did not design textiles, but she directed the textile department.”

She brought to textile production a modern sensibility that used color and texture as primary design elements.

Early on, the firm hired young, untried designers, along with leading proponents of modern design, to create textile patterns.

Core designers included Astrid Sampe, Marianne Strengell, Sven Markelius, Angelo Testa, Stig Lindberg, Eszter Haraszty, Suzanne Huguenin, and Evelyn Hill Anselevicius.

If Florence Knoll didn’t like it, they didn’t make it.

Florence Knoll sketch of the Bertoia Chair sketch for the Smithsonian Traveling Textile exhibition

Knoll Designers

When you study the working lives of famous architects, some appear to have been as solitary as a skyscraper, with nameless assistants blending into the skyline around them.

But Florence Knoll, the brilliant American architect, interior space-planner and furniture designer, had a gift for collaborating with others and for recognizing and promoting great work.

Florence Knoll helped create Knoll with an elegant steeliness that contrasted with her adorable looks and nickname.

She assisted in bringing into form some of the most enduring design products of modernist luminaries like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Isamu Noguchi, Eero Saarinen and Marcel Breuer, at the same time producing singular interiors and furniture of her own.

Her achievements would have been remarkable for anyone, but for a woman in postwar corporate America they were extraordinary.

She bucked tradition, attributing design credits and paying royalties to designers, an unusual practice in the furniture industry.

Florence Knoll’s connections with leading and emerging contemporary furniture designers opened up new venues for these designers, which may not have been possible without her eye for the total package and the company’s commitment to crediting architects and designers by name and paying them royalties.

Today’s interior and furniture designers owe a debt to Florence, who was the first to credit her designers by name and pay them royalties, a degree of respect that owed something to her many personal friendships with designers – she knew Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia, for example, from her days at Cranbrook Academy of Art – but also to her staunch philosophy that interiors should be designed rather than decorated

Knoll Associates’s support and promotion of these now–iconic designers were contributing factors to their long–term success.

Under her leadership, many modern masters created iconic pieces for Knoll, including Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chairs and pedestal tables (his tables sit in front of a Knoll sofa in her Miami home), Isamu Noguchi’s coffee table, Harry Bertoia’s wire furniture and Richard Schultz’s outdoor collection.

Numerous artists and architects have at one time or another designed pieces for or ceded exclusive rights to Knoll, including Florence’s former mentors, Breuer, who provided his Wassily chair, and Mies van der Rohe, whose Barcelona chair series has become one of the touchstones of 20th-century seating, as well as Charles Gwathmey, Frank Gehry, Richard Meier, Robert Venturi, Eero Saarinen and, perhaps most famously, Harry Bertoia

Today, many of the furniture pieces commissioned by Knoll or designed by Knoll herself are represented in the modern design and decorative arts collections of major art museums across the country, and in Canada and Europe. It is a rare modern design aficionado who does not crave at least one piece of furniture by Eames or Saarinen, or a Bertoia wire chair, for their own living space.

eero saarinen

harry bertoia

mies van der rohe

The Knoll Planning Unit –  the interior design service of Knoll Associates (1943–1971)

As a pioneer of the Knoll Planning Unit, she revolutionized interior space planning. 

Knoll and the Planning Unit were important figures in the development of interior design from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Florence ardently maintained that she did not merely decorate space. She created it.

In creating the revolutionary Knoll Planning Unit, Florence Knoll defined the standard for the modern corporate interiors of post-war America.

Through a combination of prestigious clients, astute promotion and skilled staff, Florence Knoll and the Knoll Planning Unit turned this corporate humanized modernism into a ubiquitous reality.

She set up the Knoll Planning Unit, which developed from her growing realization that, while clients might know very well what they needed, they were rarely able to communicate those needs.

Drawing on her background in architecture, she introduced modern notions of efficiency, space planning, and comprehensive design to office planning.

The Planning Unit not only specified furniture models and arrangements but also corresponding textiles, carpets, window treatments and office accessories.

The Planning Unit was created when I joined the company to design interiors. In the course of events, I became design director and critic for furniture, textiles and graphics. Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Ralph Rapson from Cranbrook were among the early designers to contribute to the collection along with Jens Risom, George Nakashima and Isamu Naguchi. During this time of unavailable materials, many of the designs were experimental and limited to drawings and models

The Planning Unit rigorously researched and surveyed each client — assessing their needs, defining patterns of use and understanding company hierarchies — before presenting a comprehensive design, informed by the principles of modernism and beautifully executed in signature Knoll style.

Florence and the Planning Unit were responsible for the interiors of some of America’s largest corporations, including IBM, GM and CBS.

She became one of the first in the interior design industry to have lengthy meetings with everyone involved in a project to try to tease out, not what each person thought would make his job more efficient, but which elements actually would make the job more efficient.

Florence’s Knoll Planning Unit transformed the standard American workplace from dark and drab to light and open.

However she did not want to be confused for an interior decorator, insisting ‘I am not a decorator… the only place I decorate is my own house,’ signifying the developing profession of interior designer during the 20th century

1960, Florence Knoll retired as President of Knoll to become Director of Design then resigned five years later.

Although several experienced designers remained in the Knoll Planning Unit, without her guidance the company’s intentions changed and conflict of ideas arose between staff members.

Due to this, the company’s success went down hill and The Planning Unit ceased operation in 1971.

Knoll Planning Unit projects

Florence Knoll designed acclaimed office projects for CBS in New York, the Rockefeller family, Look Magazine, Connecticut General Life Insurance in Bloomfield,  First National Bank of Miami, and H.J. Heinz Company Pittsburgh, IBM, and General Motors  – all embraced this new way of organizing business space.

Her vision for the new office was clean and uncluttered, and the corporate boom of the 1960s provided an opportunity for her to change the way people looked at the workplace.

As a pioneer of the Knoll Planning Unit, she revolutionized interior space planning.

Florence Knoll’s application of design principles in solving space problems was a radical departure from standard practice in the 1950s, but was quickly adopted and remains widely used today

Her open plan layouts created clean, uncluttered spaces a perfect venue for her furniture.

Both Hans and Florence had great connections eg through their friendship with Howard Meyers, editor of Architectural Forum, for example, they got a commission to design the Rockefeller offices at the top of New York’s Rockefeller Plaza.

Florence went on to design projects for the Connecticut General Life Insurance building, the CBS building, the Seagram’s and Look magazine offices and the Heinz Company headquarters, staying on at the company for ten years after Hans’ death in 1955.

Knoll made a name for herself in the 1980s in Miami, where she eventually settled, by campaigning—with ultimate futility, as it happened—against billboards.

Of her influence and often maddening precision, longtime Knoll quality control manager Bo Lonwell has said, “She had that ability to critique a design, to tear it apart and put it back together. She did it with Charles Pollock’s chair. Pollock’s chair would never have been the success it is today had not Shu taken Charles under her wing and critiqued the hell out of it, and made the proportions right, and done everything right. But you know, after all was said and done, and she finally agreed on it, it was absolutely perfect.”

General life Insurance executive group scrutinizing Florence Knoll paste-ups

General Life Insurance ( 1954 )

National Bank of Miami ( 1957 )

1957 first national bank of miami presidents office

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South East Bank, Miami ( 1984 )

‘The Southest Bank Building in Miami, Florida, was designed by Charles Bassett (no relation). He was the chief designer for the Skidmore, Owings & Merrill firm in San Francisco.

It was my responsibility to oversee all aspects of the design.’

‘The Art Collection had started in years before the building was erected. There was a committee for selection and approval and the location of the art. Specific artists were chosen for the large public areas like the entrance lobby and the large banking hall.’

Conneticut General life  ( 1957 )

CBS ( 1965 )

Florence Knoll Bassett sketch for the Office Suite for Dr. Frank Stanton, President in Columbia Broadcasting System Building, New York (1966)

For this CBS project Florence Knoll commented on former president Frank Stanton (  a longtime friend and favorite client ).

“He was a perfectionist,” she says. “It was rewarding to work with a man who wanted everything to be exactly right.”

This project centred around making a space interesting when confronted with a repetitive module.

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At the pinnacle of her career in 1965, she withdrew from the design world after completing the interiors of the CBS headquarters.

Chronology / history

Florence Schust was born on May 24, 1917 in Saginaw, Michigan USA

She was an only child

She was affectionately known as “Shu” by her colleagues and friends

Her father Frederick Schust ( a baker) died in 1922 when Florence was aged 5

Her mother Mina died in 1929

Florence was now orphaned at age 12

She was then cared for by Emile Tessin, a friend of the family whom her mother had appointed as Florence’s legal guardian in the event of her death.

When arrangements were being made for Florence to attend boarding school she was given the opportunity to make the selection. Kingswood School ( an all girls’ school designed and presided over by Eliel Saarinen ) in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan,

Kingswod was part of the newly created Cranbrook educational community.

It held a strong aesthetic appeal for her and she “made an immediate decision that it was the right place for me,”

She was exposed to numerous crafts at Kingswood, but it was the architecture of the school itself that most impressed her and inspired her to become an architect

She began her architectural studies under the school’s art director, Rachel de Wolfe Raseman.

While attending Kingswood School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Florence met the Saarinen family with whom she became close friends.

She was fascinated by the building; word got to Saarinen and son Eero, 7 years her senior and studying architecture at Yale, and soon young Florence was accompanying them on summer pilgrimages to Finland.

She studied under Eliel Saarinen and developing her interest in texture and color through her friendship with Loja Saarinen who supervised the school’s weaving studio.

Following Florence’s graduation from Kingswood in 1934, Eliel Saarinen encouraged her to spend some time at Cranbrook Academy of Art before attending an accredited architecture school

Kingswood is on the same campus grounds as Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills Michigan.

At Kingswood, she designed her first house, conceptually complete in every detail, at age 14.

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Cranbrook presented a holistic approach to design that Florence carried forth with her.

Florence Knoll at Cranbrook

cranbrook 1940

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http://schools.cranbrook.edu/timeline.htm

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The major components of Cranbrook were designed and built during the years between 1926 and 1943. Cranbrook had its beginnings in 1904, when George Gough Booth, publisher of the Detroit News, and his wife, Ellen Warren Scripps Booth, bought a large farm in the rolling countryside of Bloomfield Hills and named it after the English village of Cranbrook, the Booth family ancestral home.

Taking up residence in 1907, the Booths gradually transformed their farm estate into a remarkable cultural and educational complex consisting of their home, Cranbrook House; the Meeting House, which was expanded into the elementary Brookside School; Christ Church, Cranbrook; Cranbrook School for boys; Cranbrook Academy of Art; Kingswood School for girls; and Cranbrook Institute of Science.

A superb integration of architectural and landscape design elements, the Cranbrook complex represents a unique masterpiece in the history of American architecture.

It embodies the belief shared by its founder, George G. Booth, and its principal architect, Eliel Saarinen, that art should permeate every aspect of life.

In 1925, George Booth began to collaborate with architect Eliel Saarinen to develop plans for other educational institutions on the Cranbrook campus.

The first project Saarinen undertook for the Cranbrook Foundation established by the Booths in 1927 was to build Cranbrook School, which was completed in 1928.

In 1929, Saarinen began to design the girls’ school, Kingswood School Cranbrook, and he collaborated with artisans to create furniture, fabrics and other decorative elements for the schools. Kingswood school opened to students in 1931.

Eliel Saarinen encouraged Florence to attend Cranbrook Academy of Art before finishing her studies in architecture.

She spent the next two years at Cranbrook working closely with advanced students and artists such as the Saarinens and Carl Milles, and gaining experience in all aspects of design.

drawing by florence knoll at cranbrook in 1934

She studied at the Cranbrook Academy of Art

Knoll also received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology in 1941

There, she met and worked with many of the designers, Ray and Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia for example, whose furniture and fabric designs she would later commission for her total design packages at Knoll Associates.

Cranbrook Academy of Art, known as the cradle of American modernism, continues to have a significant impact on the world of art, architecture, and design completely disproportionate to its size. Outstanding artists, architects and designers – the Saarinens, Ray and Charles Eames, Florence Knoll, Jack Lenor Larsen, Donald Lipski, Duane Hanson and Hani Rashid, to name only a few – have been a part of Cranbrook’s community of artists. Lasting friendships formed at the Academy lead to future professional collaboration

class of 1934 at cranbrook graduation – florence schust is front row 4th from the left

florence knoll at cranbrook

Eero Saarinen

16 yr old Florence visiting the Saarinens in Kirkkonuumi Finland in 1933

eero saarinen working on a model

hans and florence knoll with the saarinen family for fathers day

florence knoll and eero saarinen

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She associated with many of the Cranbrook students, including Eero Saarinen, Ralph Rapson and Harry Bertoia, whom she later recruited to design for Knoll Associates during the ’40s and ’50s.

And, in turn, Knoll was asked to design the interior spaces for Saarinen’s CBS headquarters building in New York City

Warmly embraced by the Saarinen family, Florence vacationed with them in Finland, enjoyed the company of their accomplished friends, and formed a very close relationship with Eliel’s son, Eero.

Knoll Bassett then studied for two years at the Architectural Association in London, spending summers with the Saarinens in Europe.

After graduating, she attended a few architecture schools in Europe, but World War II sent her stateside, where she earned her degree at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, studying under professor Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

She completed her formal training at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she studied under Mies van der Rohe, whom she credits with having “a profound effect on my design approach and the clarification of design.”

(Later, in 1948, she secured the rights to his classic Barcelona collection for Knoll).

The connections she made and the skills she developed while at Cranbrook were the foundations of Florence Schust’s incredible design education and pioneering career.

With recommendations from Eliel Saarinen and Alvar Aalto, Florence went on to study under some of the greatest 20th century architects, including Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in Cambridge, Massachuset

After graduation Knoll Bassett worked for architecture firms in Boston and New York where she met Hans Knoll who was then in the process of establishing a furniture business

She briefly worked with leaders of the Bauhaus movement, including Walter Gropius,Marcel Breuer, and the American modernist, Wallace K. Harrison.

In 1938, Hans Knoll founded his furniture company by that name in New York.

In 1943 she was working for Harrison and Abromovitz Architects in New York when she met Hans Knoll

Hans Knoll asked her to design an office for the U.S. Secretary of War.

She began working for the Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company.

In 1943 she began working for him in her spare time as an interior space planner and designer.

In 1943, Florence Schust convinced Hans she could help bring in business to his company even in America’s wartime economy by expanding into interior design by working with architects.

With her architectural background and design flair, she succeeded.

They married in 1946, she became a full business partner and together they founded Knoll Associates.

Knoll Associates also moved into furniture textiles in 1947 with a large range of fabrics using natural and man-made materials, including the classic Cato fabric in 1961

In 1950, Hans moved the Knoll base of operations from New York City to Pennsylvania.

A new furniture factory was established in Pennsylvania and dealers in Knoll’s furniture were carefully added over the next several years.[2]

Florence Knoll felt architects should contribute their design ability to furniture as well.

Some of these furniture designs would become design icons of the 20th century and have remained in the Knoll line for decades due to their timeless design.

When Hans Knoll died in a car accident in 1955, Florence Knoll took over operation of the company as President and led the company through uncertain times

Florence Knoll herself designed chairs, sofas, tables and casegoods during the 1950s, many of which remain in the Knoll line to this day.

In 1958 she married Harry Hood Bassett.

She founded Knoll textiles and designed the company’s regional showrooms.

In 1960, she ceded herself to the position of consultant, leaving the company altogether in 1965

in 2004, she came out of retirement to design an exhibition of her own work for the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2004.

Curator Kathryn Hiesinger considers herself honored to have been Shu’s last client. “Our exhibition space was small, about 330 square feet. It’s a problematic space, long and skinny, broken up by windows, but Shu domesticated it and made it beautiful,” Heisinger said. “Her solutions were so smart and inventive. The staff called it the Shu-Box. She designed the whole exhibition, down to the last detail. She sent us a list of furniture for the show, illustrated with meticulous color drawings she made of each piece. Mrs. Bassett made at least three trips to Philadelphia in preparation for the show. Everything she did was impeccable.”

For her extraordinary contributions to architecture and design, Florence Knoll was accorded the prestigious National Medal of Arts in 2002.

Intro

Now 96, Florence Knoll Bassett is revered by generations of architects, designers, students and collectors of Modern furniture.

Knoll International remains a highly respected manufacturer of furniture and textiles, still producing the designs of Florence Knoll.

Her contributions to Knoll, and to the rise of modernism in America, are immeasurable

As director of the Knoll Planning Unit, Knoll Bassett established herself as one of the most important and influential interior planners and designers of the second half of the twentieth century.

Florence Knoll Bassett brought about a revolution in the American office.

Heavy, dark woods and closed off spaces were transformed into modern, bright, and open workspaces under her skillful guidance.

An architect, designer, and proponent of humanized modernism, she changed the way we work, and produced some of the 20th century’s most iconic furniture pieces.

Believing that intelligent design “strikes at the root of living requirements and changing habits,” she established the practice of working closely with the corporate sector to determine the needs of the people who would actually use the spaces that her company designed.

Her connections with leading contemporary architects and designers, and the company’s commitment to crediting designers by name and paying them royalties, laid the foundations for the strong working relationships upon which the commercial success of Knoll Associates was built.

Drawing on a pool of top architects and designers, many of whom were personal friends, Knoll Bassett directed the company’s Bauhaus approach, incorporating design excellence, technological innovation, and mass production in a seamless package of “total design.”

While Knoll Bassett oversaw the creative process of the Planning Unit’s operations in its entirety, she was also directly responsible for many of the individual elements used in the Unit’s projects.

During the war years, she worked with her designers to overcome the scarcity of materials, establishing Knoll Textiles in response to the dearth of available fabrics and textile colors, and developing the company’s hallmark style of spare clean lines and vibrant colors in a functional, comfortable, and aesthetically appealing space.

Finding that much of the “fill-in” furniture, primarily cabinetry, that she envisaged in many of her plans was not available, Knoll Bassett designed the pieces herself.

She used the Knoll showrooms as “experimental laboratories” to convince clients to use modern ideas and materials, showcasing and putting into production the classic designs of people such as Eero Saarinen, Mies van der Rohe, Jens Risom, Harry Bertoia, Isamu Noguchi, and Marcel Breuer.

After the war Knoll Associates expanded to Europe through a series of government contracts which resulted ultimately in the formation of Knoll International.

When Hans Knoll died suddenly in an automobile accident in 1955 Florence became president of the company.

She married Harry Hood Bassett in 1958 and began to divide her time between New York and Florida.

In 1959 she sold her interest in Knoll Associates to Art Metal and retired as President of the company the following year, while continuing to work as a consultant and serving as Design Director.

In 1961 she became the first woman to be awarded the Gold Medal for Industrial Design by the American Institute of Architects, one of many awards received over the course of her career.

In 1965 she resigned from Knoll Associates entirely after completing the interior design for the CBS headquarters in New York.

Following her retirement Knoll Bassett devoted more time to private commissions and other interests such as her campaign against billboards in Miami in the mid 1980s.

She spent summers in Vermont and winters in Florida with her husband, until his death in 1991.

In July 2001, Metropolis magazine published a rare interview with Knoll Bassett in which she reflects upon the life she so skillfully documented in the extraordinary gift of her archival papers to the Archives of American Art.

Hans Knoll founded his eponymous company in New York in 1938, just one year after immigrating from Germany.

He must already have had big dreams, for he posted a sign saying “Factory No. 1” outside the single second-story room he rented on East 72nd Street.

Hans’s father was the pioneering German manufacturer of modern furniture, Walter.

Establishing the H.G. Knoll Furniture Company was Hans’s declaration of independence.

Hans Knoll, born and raised in Stuttgart, had been educated in England and Switzerland during an era of aesthetic and social revolution.

An admirer of the Bauhaus, he was familiar with its giants of design and architecture, including Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Stuttgart, one of the breeding grounds for the crop of new ideas generated in during the 1920s, hosted many exhibitions of the Deutscher Werkbund, a government organization that promoted German design and architecture.

Such were the influences on young Hans Knoll. By the time he crossed the Atlantic at age 24, he had formulated the credo that would distinguish his company: Modern architects need modern furniture for their modern buildings.

Many of those modern architects had left Germany before Knoll.

In 1933, the Nazis had shut down the Bauhaus, a hothouse of ideas that nurtured some of the 20th century’s greatest architects, designers, and artists.

Mies Van der Rohe, Breuer, and Gropius, among others, fled to the United States, transplanting the philosophies of architecture that have evolved into American design culture as we know it.

In 1932, the year before the Nazis sparked the exodus of many of Germany’s great young designers, George W. Booth established the Academy of Art at Cranbrook, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

He selected Eliel Saarinen, a Finnish emigre and noted modern architect, as president.

Cranbrook, as the academy came to be known, had much in common with the Bauhaus.

Both were schools and residential communities for practicing artists, founded on the utopian ideal that aesthetic values would tame the chaos of industrial society.

Each was committed to an underlying competence in craft and craftsmanship.

Cranbrook’s faculty and graduates, like those of the Bauhaus, had a major impact on 20th century art, design and architecture, and many later became associated with the Knoll company.

America’s isolation from the modern movement began to dissipate in 1940 when two young American instructors from Cranbrook – Eero Saarinen, Eliel’s son, and Charles Eames-won an international competition for furniture design conducted by New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Since it was unprecedented for Americans to achieve honors in the field of furniture design, Eames and Saarinen and their furniture prototypes began to change the perception that only Europe produced superior designers.

When the post-war building boom erupted in an explosion of homes and office buildings, it was the architects of the Bauhaus who were selected to design corporate America.

In the second half of the 20th century the faculty and graduates of both the Bauhaus and Cranbrook helped set the standard for contemporary architecture and design around the world.

During the early 1940s, Knoll had begun to think about developing a base for manufacturing outside New York City.

An excellent business manager, he began investigating eastern Pennsylvania because of its concentrated population of German-Americans and Pennsylvania Dutch.

The community had a tradition of meticulous craftsmanship and a potential supply of healthy young laborers returning from the war who no longer wanted to farm.

Knoll made his first major investment: a former planing mill in Pennsburg, near Quakertown.

During the war, Knoll had met and hired Florence Schust, a young space planner and designer who later helped Knoll achieve his vision of modern furniture and interiors for modern buildings.

As a student at Cranbrook, Schust, had became friends with the Saarinen family and spent summers with them at their home in Hvitrask, Finland.

She also toured Europe, visiting the great architectural sites.

She later studied at the Architectural Association in London at the suggestion of the great Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, and spent two years there under the influence of Le Corbusier.

At the outbreak of the war, Schust returned to the U.S., apprenticing with Gropius and Breuer until she entered the Armour Institute (subsequently the Illinois Institute of Technology) to complete her degree.

There, Mies van der Rohe, the head of the school of architecture, had a profound effect on her design approach.

Schust moved to New York after graduation and worked in several architectural offices where, as the only female, she was assigned the few interiors projects that came along.

When Schust joined Knoll’s company, she considered herself an interior designer with “opinions” about furniture-not, strictly speaking, a furniture designer.

The two had a difficult time finding work involving contemporary design; when they did, production proved problematic because materials were limited by wartime shortages.

Nevertheless, they persisted.

Knoll and Schust married in 1946.

They also formalized their business partnership, which became Knoll Associates Inc.

Florence’s keen eye for design, Hans’s knowledge of furniture manufacturing and marketing, and their limitless energy proved to be a winning combination.

Florence played a critical role in the company’s development.

She championed the Bauhaus approach to furniture design: to offer objects that reflected design excellence, technological innovation and mass production.

Together, the Knolls searched out and nurtured talented designers.

They believed strongly that designers should be credited by name and paid royalties for their designs.

Knoll continues that tradition today.

Through her strong leadership, the Knoll business acquired the best designs and commissioned an amazing array of lesser-known designers (Franco Albini, Hans Bellman, Herbert Matter and George Nakashima), as well as ones who have become household names, such as Isamu Noguchi, Harry Bertoia and Eero Saarinen

After the death of Hans Knoll in 1955, Florence Knoll took over as president and continued to exert her influence on all aspects of design, while leaving business matters to others.

In 1958, she married Harry Hood Bassett, and began dividing her time between New York and Florida.

In 1965, she resigned from the company, withdrawing from the industry completely but leaving the company in the hands of those she had trained and inspired.

Bassett is President and Chairperson of the Bassett Foundation, which was established by her late second husband, Harry Hood Bassett

A strong advocate for conserving farmland, the Bassetts donated the development rights to their Vermont farm to the American Farmland Trust.

As part-time Vermont residents, Florence and Hood Bassett generously supported facilities at the University of Vermont, including the Flow Cytometry Facility at the UVM College of Medicine and the Proctor Maple Research Center.

Bassett was inducted into the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame in 1985.

Florence knoll archives

In 2000, she donated her papers to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art. Her career archive – described by Metropolis magazine as “a revelation” – was a work of art in itself.

In 2003, her contributions to modern design earned her the honor of the 2002 National Medal of Arts – the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government. No doubt, Florence Knoll Bassett will continue to inspire innovation in interior design for generations to come.

Knoll won four of the Museum of Modern Art’s “Good Design” competitions, and Knoll designs are still displayed today among others on MoMA’s top floor.

The University of Miami presented Florence Knoll with an honorary doctorate in architecture in 1995.

Florence became the first woman to receive the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal for Industrial Design in 1961.

Knoll was awarded the 2002 National Medal of Arts for her singular contribution to American design

University of Vermont – Doctor of Letters

With George W and Laura Bush in 2003

Florence Knoll Bassett Honored at the White House

Knoll Inc. congratulates Florence Knoll Bassett upon receiving the 2002 Medal of Arts for her contributions to 20th century modern design. She was accorded this prestigious honor in an Oval Office ceremony at the White House on March 6, 2003.

Florence Knoll Bassett was at once a champion of world-class architects and designers and an exceptional designer in her own right. Her groundbreaking creations became the gold standard of modern classics, although she modestly referred to them as “the fill-pieces that no one else wants to do.”

Her vision, pioneering spirit and her commitment to creating furnishing solutions that met the client’s needs brought Knoll to the forefront of modern design, thus creating the legacy that continues today.

”Florence Knoll Bassett imbued Knoll with an uncanny blend of intellect, intuition and objective perfectionism,” notes president and CEO, Knoll North America, Kass Bradley. ”She continues to inspire us to sustain the innovation, service and design vision that define the Knoll experience.”

The National Medal of Arts is the highest award given to artists and art patrons by the United States government. It is awarded by the President of the United States to individuals or groups who, in his judgement, ”… are deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and availability of the arts in the United States.”

During the past 18 years, more than 200 extraordinary patrons and artists in the field of visual, performing and literary arts have been honored, and in that time period, three Knoll architects and designers have received the award: Isamu Noguchi (1987), Robert Venturi (1992) and Frank Gehry (1998)

Florence Knoll’s furniture designs that really stand out. She only designed furniture when the existing pieces in the Knoll collection didn’t meet her needs. Almost half of the furniture pieces in Knoll’s collection were her designs. The eponymous Executive Collection, comprising 2 and 3 seat sofas, armchair, bench, coffee table and side table, executive table desk and credenza is, in my opinion, her crowning achievement. All perfectly proportioned with sleek silhouettes and geometries, they are true design classics, looking as fresh and modern today as they did when she designed them nearly 60 years ago.

For her extraordinary contributions to architecture and design, Florence Knoll was accorded the National Endowment for the Arts’ prestigious 2002 National Medal of the Arts, presented by President George W Bush and First Lady Laura Bush in March 2003

With Harry Hood Bassett in Vermont

The need she felt had come about because of the Knoll Planning Unit, a unique enterprise for its time, which began when the then Florence Schust became associated with Knoll full time. It did on a regular basis the work she had been doing when she “moonlighted” for Hans. Thinking in terms of architecture, she was trying to relate interior design to the building and the furniture to the interior, as well as to a human scale.

The Knoll Planning Unit was described in the May 1945 issue of Arts and Architectures as “the force which integrates all the various related activities” of the company, with the objective of placing “well designed ‘equipment for living’ within the reach of a large consumer market.

By March 1946 it had come to the attention of Interiors magazine, which described the Planning Unit as “a proving ground for a group of young designers with architectural and engineering background, who refuse to compromise with the taste of a dictatorial public. A loose collaborative arrangement has benefited both designers and manufacturer.”

Hard as it may seem to remember, the interiors of the early 1940s were still dominated by the “period” and “antique” styles. “Practically all existing mass-produced furniture, “said Interiorsin its articles about Knoll, “caters to a broad public of undiscriminating taste… The commercial product that pours from furniture mills today is as cumbersome as the old-fashioned sleeping car.

Nowhere was this more true than in the standard American office, imprisoned in formula and entrenched custom. She wrote, “Prior to World War II, most nonresidential interiors were either designed by the architects for the buildings or were not designed at all. Moer often than not, the building itself was at violent odds with its interior requirements: while the structure might be neo-classical, the functional requirements of the interiors were frequently modern in extreme, so that either the interior spaces would match.

What Knoll had to offer in contrast to this was not merely office furniture of contemporary design but a different way of thinking about space and the purpose to which it was put. Integral to the process of design was an analysis of the client’s requirements, something the client – as all architects well know – cannot always visualize clearly. The interior designer must therefore become the active agent of a synthesis in which space, furniture, mechanical, equipment, choice of color and fabrics, and the selection of art, graphics, and finishing details all come together

Florence Knoll was the heart of Knoll design. It rflected her fastidiousness and care: no detail escaped, and she could be a tyrant at times. Bob Longwell, who was quality-control manager at the East Greenville plant for fifteen years, and is now its manager of special projects, well remembers her concern for quality in design. “Having worked with her, I knew what a stickler she was. She had the greatest design eye of anybody in the business.”

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Article

New York Times Sept 1, 1964

Woman Who Led an Office Revolution Rules an Empire of Modern Design

By Virginia Lee Warren

“Her hands, with their short, unpainted nails, are the used hands of a busy, creative person, but the enormous emerald solitaire looks perfectly at home guarding her wedding band. She wears other emeralds so casually that she might have been born with them.“—Virginia Lee Warren

Once upon a time virtually every big business executive thought—or whoever did his thinking for him on such matters thought—that his office had to have pale green walls and that his heavy, drawers-to-floor desk had to be placed cater-cornered.

Then along came a woman who showed the executives that they could be just as impressive against a background of neutral or even white walls, sometimes with one wall in a strong primary color, and that their status would not be impaired if they moved their desks to a logical, space-saving foursquare position.

The woman was young, dark-eyed, dark-haired and slender, with the clothes sense of a model, the training of an architect, unfailingly good judgment, and the nickname of Schu. She also taught the executives that a desk could be light and approachable, serving its purpose without looking like a carved mahogany fortress.

That revolution in the office took place 20 years ago and Florence Schust (Schu) Knoll, the woman who led it, is today the single most powerful figure in the field of modern design.

The worldwide Knoll empire — Knoll Associates, Inc., Knoll Textiles, Inc., and Knoll International, Ltd. — which, with its 14 offices in the United States and 21 abroad, is the largest and by far the most prestigious organization of its kind, looms as a sort of promised land for designers of furniture, textiles and accessories.

To be accepted by Knoll is to have it made. And while Knoll has a committee to pass upon submissions, it is Florence Knoll, as director of design, who makes the final decision.

Furnishing Offices

She is now engaged in designing and furnishing the thousand or so offices in the new CBS building at 51 West 52d Street where occupancy is to begin in December. Her job embraces everything from the choice of wall coverings—sometimes felt or tweed for the sake of acoustics—to ash trays, pictures and door handles.

All the furnishings and fabrics will be from Knoll with pieces by Florence Knoll and the late Eero Saarinen predominating. (This was Saarinen’s last building.)

She has led people to see that texture in fabrics can be as interesting as a print (she dislikes prints) and that steel legs on tables, chairs and sofas can have grace and elegance.

But Florence Knoll still considers, she said recently, the straightening of the cater-cornered desk and the inevitable cater-cornered table behind it her “single biggest struggle.

It marked, in a way, the beginning of an era. From that time on an office—or any other room—could be designed instead of being decorated.

“I am not a decorator,she said emphatically in the field. “The only place I decorate is my own house.

She does not think of herself as an architect, either. An authority in the field, however, said that Florence Knoll was surely the most successful woman architect anywhere.

What seems to distinguish her, above all, is something that probably has nothing to do with her training, architectural or otherwise. It is her unerring taste. Whenever her name comes up in design or architectural fields there is almost sure to be reference to this legendary attribute.

To anyone who believes in guiding stars, it would be tempting to believe that Florence Knoll has always had one. Born as an only child in Saginaw, Mich., she was orphaned by the time she had finished elementary school. (Her father was an engineer.)

The young ‘Schu’ Schust’s guardian, a banker, sent her to Kingswood in Bloomfield Hills, the girls’ school that Eliel Saarinen had designed as part of the Cranbrook Foundation. Saarinen was then president of the foundation’s Academy of Art and his son, Eero, seven years older than Schu, was studying architecture at Yale.

While other girls in Kingswood were inclined to regard the building merely as a center for the school’s activities, young Schu became fascinated with the building itself. When the Saarinens learned of this interest they virtually adopted her and she went with them on their pilgrimages to Finland summer after summer. With Eliel Saarinen she began the study of architecture.

Then, in her own words, she “sampled various schools in Europe before settling down at the Architectural Association in London (the oldest school of architecture in the world). In her third year, World War II drove her home and she went for her degree to the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, where Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was professor of architecture. She says now that she learned more from him than from anyone, and in fewer words.

Later she was to persuade him to grant the rights to reproduce his Barcelona chair to Knoll. Originally designed for the Barcelona Exposition in 1929, it is one of the true aristocrats of the Knoll line. Florence Schust worked in the offices of several New York architects and was with Harrison & Abramovitz when she met tall, handsome, dynamic Hans Knoll, who had come here from Germany by way of England and established in 1938 under his name a furniture company that was to promote modern design and create its own market. (It is generally agreed that, as an impresario and promoter of the avant-garde in his field, he has never been equaled.)

When he and Florence Schust were married in 1944, she entered the concern as a partner and set up the Knoll Planning Unite to handle the company’s interior—designing operations, heading the unit herself.

Roster of Architects

One of their greatest accomplishments was the corralling of architects—Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Pierre Jeanneret, Hans Bellman, among others—to design furniture. Once Florence Knoll asked Saarinen to make a chair “like a great big basket of pillows that I can curl up in,and his womb chair was the result.

The Knolls staked Harry Bertoia, the sculptor, to two years in a studio barn in Pennsylvania, to see if, after his work with metals, he could turn out furniture. His wire chairs were the answer.

The textile division was established. And a design development unit was set up to give would-be designers a chance to show what they could do. From this cradle of design have come such creations as the petal table by Richard Schultz.

When the Knolls were asked by the State Department to produce furniture for American personnel abroad, they went on from that to form Knoll International.

The 21 offices scattered around the globe—five major companies, 16 licensees—give only an inkling of International’s scope. There are, for instance, some 30 franchised dealers throughout the French provinces and Africa alone.

Hans Knoll was killed in an automobile accident in 1955. His widow succeeded him as president of the Knoll enterprises. The following year she brought out the Saarinen pedestal tables and chair.

In 1957, among other projects she took on the job of doing the executive offices of the First National Bank in Miami, and the next year she was married to Harry Hood Bassett, an officer of the bank (he is now president) and a Florida cattle rancher. He was exactly her age and, like herself, had been born in Michigan.

Married a Year

When she had been married a year she sold the Knoll companies—Knoll Associates, Knoll Textiles and Knoll International—to Art Metal Construction Company, a move that permitted her to spend more time in Florida.

She kept the presidency of all three Knoll entities, though.

By 1960 Florida was beckoning more insistently than ever and she resigned the presidencies, but she is still very much in charge of design for all Knoll enterprises.

Today Florence Knoll Bassett leads the kind of life that many women might dream of, if they could dream big enough and were not allergic to work.

She and her husband live on Sunset Island, off Miami, where there is a studio workshop on the grounds for her. They also have an apartment in New York, at 200 East 66th Street, and are looking for a place in Vermont.

Florence Knoll’s clothes are either custom-made—Balenciaga in Paris, Joan Morse of A la Carte in New York—or are jeans or Lillies or things from Jax.

Her hands, with their short, unpainted nails, are the used hands of a busy, creative person, but the enormous emerald solitaire looks perfectly at home guarding her wedding band. She wears other emeralds so casually—earrings, a flower spray with diamonds fastened to three strands of pearls—that she might have been born with them.

A Slight Figure

A little below average height and small-boned, she has, at 48, the slight figure and quick movements of a schoolgirl, but the poise is that of a woman used to being in command of a situation.

She is frequently described as stunning or beautiful—terms inspired not so much by rather delicate but slightly irregular features as by an inward radiance and animation. Her intelligence shows.

In Florida, she starts work these days around 8:30 A.M. with miniature, drawn-to-scale mock-ups of the various floors in the CBS building. The morning is almost sure to include a couple of hours on the telephone with the New York office.

Lunch, served on a tray by the pool, takes only half an hour. Then she works until 5:30 or 6, after which there are three sets of tennis and a swim with her husband.

In New York her days are spent at the Knoll offices and showroom, 320 Park Avenue. (Anyone accompanied by a decorator may visit the showroom). If her husband cannot join her she usually lunches alone.

She reads biography or history as she eats. She does not care for fiction, saying, “I’m interested only in things that are real.

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Shu U | Metropolis Magazine | July 2001
www.metropolismag.com, 1 Feb 2002 [cached]

When I heard last year that Florence Knoll Bassett (“Shu” to her friends and colleagues) had donated her papers to the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, I was thrilled.The historian in me was anxious to review the life and work of this legendary interior space planner and designer, who at the pinnacle of her career in 1965 gracefully withdrew from the design world after completing the interiors of the CBS headquarters, in New York.

The Knoll archive is a revelation.There are beautifully illustrated letters written to her by Eero Saarinen; photographs and sketches of her most important interior-design projects; the first house plan she did as a student at Kingswood, the girls boarding school at Cranbrook.Bassett has carefully organized all the material in color-coded files, creating special boxes to contain them.

Best of all, there are short handwritten anecdotes accompanying many of the photos and sketches.On a photo of Nelson Rockefeller’s desk (he was her first major client), she has circled an odd-looking inkwell.When you flip the photo over and read her explanation, you learn that the inkwell was made by her friend Isamu Noguchi.On the reverse side of a photo of the Knoll Planning Unit office, she writes that staff member Peter Andes called it “Shu U.” because its young designers were being recruited by architectural firms, who had begun to start their own interior-design divisions.Bassett also produced a little illustrated book for the archive laying out her life and work–education, projects, awards, even some details of her personal life.

…

In a rare interview, I talked to Bassett about the archive and her remarkable life–the Cranbrook years, her relationship with the Saarinens, the infiuence of Mies van der Rohe, her breakthroughs in space planning, her favorite projects (such as the Knoll showrooms), the threatened demolition of the Connecticut General building, and even her fight in the 1980s against billboards, an issue that has recently resurfaced.

Only Bassett–who absorbed both the warmth and humanity of Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook and the rigorous purity of Mies–could put together such a perfect archive.Her creative process is refiected in the way she has assembled the collection: organizing, reducing, and clarifying = Mies; personal explanations and handwritten anecdotes = Cranbrook.Although Bassett never formally became a teacher like her mentors Saarinen and Mies, by managing to fit her life and work into one neat package she shows us that her papers are more than just a personal history–they are a lesson in design.

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First Lady of Design

Paul Makovsky

It was one thing to get the scoop of my career—an interview with media-shy Florence Knoll Bassett (see “Shu U,” Metropolis, July 2001). But two years later, when she invited me to spend the day with her at the White House, I was stunned. How many times do you get invited to the White House—let alone with a legendary designer? On March 6 I joined a small group of Bassett’s family members and friends to watch her receive a National Medal of the Arts from President George W. Bush. She was one of nine honorees celebrated that day with the nation’s highest honor for artistic excellence, a group including landscape architect Lawrence Halprin, museum director Philippe de Montebello, the late caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, and singer Smokey Robinson.

Educated by architects Eliel Saarinen and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Bassett designed the interiors of CBS, in New York; Connecticut General, in Hartford, Connecticut; and the Heinz Company headquarters, in Pittsburgh. As a pioneer of the Knoll Planning Unit, she revolutionized interior space planning. Bassett’s application of design principles in solving space problems was a radical departure from standard practice in the 1950s, but was quickly adopted and remains widely used today.

During an intimate ceremony in the Oval Office, President Bush bestowed a medal on each recipient in front of just family, friends, and the other recipients. Shortly after the official proceedings, Bush left to prepare for a news conference about the impending war while the First Lady hosted a small reception for the honorees and their guests in the State Dining Room. We sampled a buffet of Texas-style specialties, mingled with other medal recipients and guests, and had free reign to roam the first floor of the White House. A small group of us broke off from the party and went from room to room: we admired John Martin’s portrait of Benjamin Franklin in the Green Room, tested out the furniture in the Red Room, and listened to a string ensemble in Cross Hall. I liked the oval-shaped Blue Room best because it struck me as the most geometrically pure. I asked Bassett if this was her favorite too. She paused for a moment and said, “Yes, it is.” And then looking up at the curtains, she smiled and added, “But I’d get rid of all the tassels.”

Being with Bassett at the White House made me think of the work she did for the federal government during World War II and the following years, when she designed embassies and USO clubs abroad. (She even designed the offices of General Henry Stimson, who was secretary of war during World War II.) In redesigning one USO club at the north end of Times Square in New York, she found that the existing carpet was dirty from the boot tracks of military personnel. So Bassett cut off a piece of the carpet to take with her and had a rug dyed the color of the tracks. “It worked,” she said. “It wasn’t a bad color; the track marks just blended in with the rug.”

Bassett is one of a generation of designers who had a democratic and social understanding of design. At a time when resources were scarce, she did more with less and found inventive solutions out of necessity. Within these constraints, Bassett found the freedom to do what we refer to as Good Design. It’s a lesson that resonates in today’s economic climate. Smart designers can do well with less—and they can start by getting rid of the tassels.

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Archive papers

A selection of the Florence Knoll Bassett papers in custom archival housing. Photo: Barbara Aikens

Florence Knoll Bassett even designed her own archive that she donated to the Archives of American Art in 2000. It is not uncommon for donors to provide the Archives with annotations or notes about their papers or the papers of their families. Florence Knoll, however, curated the entire contents of the collection, arranged the papers into portfolios and color–coded files, and provided a detailed inventory.

Representative of her “total design” philosophy, she also designed and had custom archival boxes made to house the collection! We have been careful to maintain Knoll’s original order and containers, adding only acid–free folders to better preserve the materials.

Depicted in this blog post is page 10 from one of the portfolios designed, compiled, and annotated by Florence Knoll in 1999 prior to donating her papers to the Archives of American Art. The portfolio includes copies of designs from all periods of her career, and copies of letters and photographs of individuals and significant events throughout her life. Biographical text, written by Knoll Bassett, accompanies the material.

Florence Knoll Bassett portfolio of photographs and articles, 1957-1997. Florence Knoll Bassett papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

Rapson

It was Rapson’s friendship with Florence Schust, the talented designer and future wife of Hans Knoll, that brought Rapson designs to the mass market and out of studio production. The Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company had been established in New York City in 1938. In 1941, the first Knoll modern furniture line was released – the “600 Series”, most of which was designed by Jens Risom, but would later include all the pieces of the Rapson Line for Knoll as well.

In 1944, Knoll and his wife, Florence Schust Knoll, established the Knoll Planning Unit to lead the research/design project he called “Equipment for Living” which was to prepare for a dramatic change in furnishing style and material after the end of World War II. Knoll believed a closer collaboration between stream-lined production and the talented designers was needed to successfully bring quality, affordable modern furniture to the masses. To set the project off on the right foot, Florence looked to Cranbrook for cutting-edge designers. Rapson was the first selected for the Planning Unit, followed by Charles Eames, Eero Saarinen and six others who together designed many of the modern classics associated with Knoll’s dominant role in defining Modern furniture.

Hans Knoll contacted wartime manufacturers in hopes of enticing them to partner for postwar production of modern furniture. Kellet AirCraft Corporation was the first to sign on to the Equipment for Living line but specified that the furniture be constructed of aluminum. In May 1944, Knoll asked Rapson to design a line of outdoor furniture for production at Kellet. Three weeks later, Rapson flew to New York with sketches of an outdoor chair, a side table, a tea wagon, and others in tow. To be constructed of tubular steel, the designs were light and playful. Knoll was reportedly delighted and wasn’t expecting something so exciting. Walter Baermann, the firm’s Head of Design, said Rapson’s furniture had a “personality, a quality that must be kept and not lost, even in the smallest detail.”

In the end, the financial details derailed the project and Kellet never produced these Rapson designs, but Knoll and Rapson were not deterred. “The Rapson Line” for Knoll had its first footings