47 Facts About Florence Knoll

Florence Marguerite Knoll Bassett was an American architect, interior designer, furniture designer, and entrepreneur who has been credited with revolutionizing office design and bringing modernist design to office interiors.

Florence Knoll worked to professionalize the field of interior design, fighting against gendered stereotypes of the decorator.

Florence Knoll is known for her open office designs, populated with modernist furniture and organized rationally for the needs of office workers.

Florence Knoll Marguerite Schust was born in Saginaw, Michigan, to Frederick Emanuel and Mina Matilda Schust, and was known in familiar circles as "Shu".

Florence Knoll was orphaned at a young age, her father died when she was 5, her mother died when she was 12.

Florence Knoll was placed under the care of Emile Tessin, who had been designated by Mina Schust as Knoll's legal guardian in the event of her death.

Between 1932 and 1934, Florence Knoll attended Kingswood School Cranbrook, a girls' school at the Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Eliel and Loja Saarinen practically adopted Florence Knoll; she spent summers with the family in Finland and befriended their son, Eero Saarinen who even gave her impromptu architectural history lessons.

Florence Knoll returned to Michigan in 1936 to undergo surgery and enrolled in the architecture department at Cranbrook again.

Florence Knoll enrolled at the Chicago Armour Institute in fall 1940.

Florence Knoll went to specifically study under Mies van der Rohe and received a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1941.

Florence Knoll was the design force and Hans Knoll was entrepreneurial and charismatic.

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

Florence Knoll expanded internationally forming Knoll International in 1951, as well as moved into textiles, forming Knoll Textiles.

Florence Knoll felt architects should contribute their design ability to furniture as well, and she brought her international connections, designer friends, and even her former teachers to Florence Knoll.

Florence Knoll managed to get architects including Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Pierre Jeanneret and Hans Bellman to design furniture for Knoll.

Famously, Florence Knoll asked Saarinen to design a chair that was "like a great big basket of pillows that I can curl up in," resulting in his classic Womb chair.

Florence Knoll persuaded her former teacher, Mies van der Rohe, to give Florence Knoll the rights to the Barcelona Chair which he had designed with Lilly Reich in 1929.

Florence Knoll tapped artists to create furniture, such as Isamu Noguchi, whose cyclone table became a Florence Knoll replica.

Florence Knoll had the sculptor, Harry Bertoia spend two years in his studio to see if he could translate his metal work into furniture resulting in his well known wire chairs.

Florence Knoll managed to attract Knoll's considerable stable of designer talent by paying commissions and royalties and ensuring credit for designs.

When Hans Knoll died in a car accident in 1955, Florence Knoll took over as president of all three Knoll companies.

Florence Knoll sold the companies to Art Metal Construction Company in 1959, though continued on as president of all three companies until 1960.

Florence Knoll created the interior design service of Knoll Associates in 1943 and directed its activities until 1965; the unit closed down 1971.

Florence Knoll conducted interviews to identify clients' work needs through interviews.

Florence Knoll provided extensive education and mentoring to the designers that worked under her, and many of the Florence Knoll Planning Unit designers went on to found interior divisions at architectural firms such as SOM.

Florence Knoll replaced the old executive desk with light and sleek modern designs, as well as straightening its diagonal positioning.

Florence Knoll redesigned conference tables into a boat-shape so that people could see one another to accommodate group discussions.

Florence Knoll often employed floating open-riser staircases and multilevel interiors, drawing on her architectural background.

Florence Knoll radically transformed interior space planning creating a "total design" or "Bauhaus approach" where interior architecture, furniture, lighting, textiles, and art were integrated.

Florence Knoll brought in architecture, ergonomics, efficiency, and space planning to her comprehensive interior designs.

Florence Knoll was renowned for how she communicated and presented the designs of the Florence Knoll Planning Unit through what she referred to as "paste-ups".

Florence Knoll was the first to use the method for interior design presentation.

Florence Knoll's paste-ups were small representational plans of the space with fabric swatches, wood chips and finishes attached to represent furniture and other details.

Florence Knoll used the paste-ups to convey the feeling and experience of the space, in the pictured example the color and texture of the materials used better represented the humanized modernism that was essential to Florence Knoll's designs.

Florence Knoll designed furniture when the existing pieces in the Florence Knoll collection didn't meet her needs.

Florence Knoll described her pieces as the "meat and potatoes," the filler among the flashier pieces in the Knoll collection.

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.

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

Florence Knoll designed furniture not only to be functional but to designate the functions of interior space as well as relate to the architecture of the space and its overall composition.

Florence Knoll's 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.

Florence Knoll fused decoration with architecture and industrial design and applied it to commercial office space, this fusion has continued to be at the core of modern professional interior design.

Florence Knoll felt that expertise in furniture design and architecture exceed the common skill of an interior decorator.

Florence Knoll received many awards and honors in her lifetime, including the Museum of Modern Art's Good Design Award, the first award from the American Institute of Decorators, and became the first woman to receive the Gold Medal for Industrial Design from the American Institute of Architects.

Florence Knoll went on to earn the International Design Award from the American Institute of Interior Designers, the Total Design Award from the American Society of Interior Designers, and the RISD Athena Award for Creativity and Excellence.

Florence Knoll was awarded honorary doctoral degrees from the University of Vermont, the University of Miami, and the University of Minnesota.

Florence Knoll married Hans Knoll in 1946; he died in a car crash in 1955.