Our February trail blazer is Florence Knoll
Bassett (1917-2019), co-founder and designer of Knoll.
Florence Knoll Bassett
From an early age Florence had an interest in
architecture and later studied and developed her design skills and foundation
for her career at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Columbia University’s school of
architecture, Architectural Association in London, and Armour Institute of
Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology).
During her advanced schooling and travels she met
many leading architects of the time who became mentors and important figures in
her future work at Knoll: including Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius
and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It’s been
said that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe perhaps influenced Florence’s signature
approach to design: rigorous and methodical.
In 1914, aiming to pursue a career in
architecture, Florence moved to New York City where she met her first husband
Hans Knoll, a third generation furniture maker from Stuttgart. Hans was seeking
to build business for a new chair, when he called upon the design firm Florence
was working at. Florence and Hans started working together, and she began
taking a significant role in the company’s aesthetics development. Before they knew it they were business
partners, combining their love for design, married in 1946, and later renaming
Hans’ furniture company to Knoll Associates.
Florence distinguished
herself during this period as an influential woman in a male-dominated
industry.
A paste-up for the 1962 Cowles Publications Building, left. At right, Florence Knoll and Hans Knoll, both in the foreground, discuss an interior.
Left, a textiles swatch wall that would become standard in the industry. Right, Ms. Knoll Bassett reviews a Planning Unit model.
Highlights of Florence’s achievements:
- She revolutionized the spaces we work
and live by establishing the Knoll Planning Unit. A “total design” approach to
space planning that included furniture, by creating architectural spaces that
were needed to make the room work and furniture that fitted the architecture.
Solidifying her role as a shaper and not just a decorator of space.
- Broadened the company’s existing
array of furniture offerings to eventually include the work of some of her
Cranbrook colleagues as well as the prominent Modernist figures who had
influenced her education and shared her critical eye; these pieces became icons
of corporate interiors of the post-war period and remain timeless designs to
this day.
- Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, Ms. Knoll
Bassett also designed individual pieces of furniture—Responding to direct needs
encountered while working on particular interiors projects, and finding the
market lacking, Ms. Knoll Bassett designed seating, tables and case goods.
- Ms. Knoll Bassett launched a textile program to
fill another gap she perceived in the market. The program, the beginning of
KnollTextiles, brought Ms. Knoll Bassett to another advancement in industry
practice. Her use of small fabric swatches in client presentations led her to
develop a tagged sample and display system that became an industry standard.
An executive office in the First National Bank, 1957, and, right, the Los Angeles Knoll Showroom, 1960, both designed by Ms. Knoll Bassett.
Florence’s strong work ethic and attention to
detail was seen in everything she did.
Even at 87, working with curator Kathryn
Hiesinger to prepare an exhibition of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, her instructions were precise and meticulous. “Nothing was left to
chance,” she even made her own "paste-up" cardboard model of how she
envisioned the space.
The discipline of her
practice and the inspired arrow of her ideas were lifelong attributes. In 2002,
Ms. Knoll Bassett was awarded the National Medal of the Arts, the highest honor
for achievement in the field presented annually by the President of the United
States to individuals or groups “deserving of special recognition by reason of
their outstanding contributions to the excellence, growth, support and
availability of the arts.” It is only one of a countless array of honors and
awards bestowed on her during her lifetime.
Ms. Knoll Bassett received the National Medal of the Arts in 2002 for her achievements. Right, one of her planning sketches while at Knoll.
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