Florence Lounge Seating Collection
Florence Knoll humbly referred to her
furniture designs as “meat and potatoes” — filler between the standout pieces
of Bertoia, Mies, and Saarinen. 65 years later her furniture is anything but
filler. Her attention to detail, eye for proportion, and command of the modern
aesthetic resulted in some of the most celebrated furniture of the modern era.
Warmed through color and texture, the Florence
Knoll Lounge Collection, is a scaled-down translation of the rhythm and
proportions of mid-century modern architecture. With a spare, geometric
profile—an expression of the rational design approach Florence Knoll learned
from her mentor, Mies van der Rohe—the settee is utterly modern and totally
timeless.
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.
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.
About Designer | |
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Florence Knoll |
While a student at the Kingswood School on the campus of the Cranbrook
Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Florence Knoll Bassett (née
Schust) became a protegée of Eero Saarinen. She studied architecture at
Cranbrook, the Architectural Association in London and the Armour Institute
(Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago). She worked briefly for Walter
Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Wallace K. Harrison. In 1946, she became a full
business and design partner and married Hans Knoll, after which they formed
Knoll Associates. She was at once a champion of world-class architects and
designers and an exceptional architect in her own right. As a pioneer of the
Knoll Planning Unit, she revolutionised interior space planning. Her belief in
"total design" – embracing architecture, manufacturing, interior
design, textiles, graphics, advertising and presentation – and her application
of design principles in solving space problems were radical departures from the
standard practice in the 1950s, but were quickly adopted and remain widely used
today. For her extraordinary contributions to architecture and design, Florence
Knoll was accorded the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious 2002
National Medal of Arts. |