If there is such a thing as a modernist vernacular, Florence Knoll created it. The grids and planes of glass, metal, and stone out of which architects built up the standards for the offices, institutions, and dwellings of the postwar period have always remained alien to most people’s sense of daily life. That same sensibility applied to sofas, credenzas, tables, and chairs, however, has become part of the decor that surround us as many of us as we lead our daily lives. Nobody did more to install those pieces of furniture across the United States and beyond than Knoll, who passed away on Jan. 25.
Many years ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the headquarters of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. outside of Hartford, Conn. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill with courtyards by Isamu Noguchi, the building as a structure was beautiful. But it really came alive through Knoll’s designs and space planning, unfolding into an environment of wood, leather, stone, and laminated plastic planes that translated the steel-and-glass frame into a work environment that looked and felt like you could be productive. Above all else, these interiors looked both efficient and comfortable. They embodied the utopia that corporate America at its peak represented.
Such total environments were among Knoll’s signal achievements, but of course the reason that we know her name and will remember her is because of the pieces: the lines of furniture she produced, originally with husband Hans Knoll. Although her designs were not the most original or even the most technically innovative—that distinction belongs to the team of designers George Nelson assembled at Herman Miller—Knoll’s work refined those achievements, as well as the prototypes created prewar at the Bauhaus, into forms that combined a sense of monumentality with a clarity of function and comfort.
The classic so-called “Knoll sofa,” for instance, has upright proportions, with the cushions presenting a counterpoint to the flat surfaces by extending beyond the back, while the sides are strong enough to both contain the overall shape and provide support for the arms. Her glass coffee and end tables are as minimalist as you can get while still holding up a cup of coffee or a coffee table book. They are not much more than polished aluminum frames and glass tops, but the proportions of the supports and the clearly expressed metal clips give the shapes a sense of logic and clarity. The storage units, usually carried out in a blond wood with a marble or Melamine top, are miniature buildings that provide a place for everything a house or office might need.
As Knoll grew, the company gave work to countless other designers but kept that simple aesthetic alive. The company did, along the way, also make room for the curves and swoops of Eero Saarinen’s Tulip chair and, much later, Frank Gehry, FAIA’s bent plywood pieces, each of which did more to spread those designers’ sensibilities around the world than any of their buildings. Even in the years when their aesthetic seemed to wane, they stuck with a foursquare sense of purpose, and were lucky enough to see their commitment rewarded by a revival of interest in their lines.
That same sensibility extended to Knoll’s stores, which became beacons of good design long before Apple opened its glass cubes all around the world. Brightly lit, airy, and clearly laid out, Knoll furniture showrooms were prototypes of what our everyday environment could and should look like.
Educated at Cranbrook from high school on, Florence Knoll (born Schust, and later in life Bassett) studied with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Eliel Saarinen, among others. After starting her eponymous company with Hans in 1938—he died in an automobile accident in 1955—she kept control of it until the early 1970s, when she retired to Florida. (She might have retired from the company, but she kept designing.) As she lived to be 101, she was able to experience the complete arc of Modernism, from its explosion onto the Western European and American scene, through its dominance of much of the production of buildings and interiors after the Second World War, onto its later decline, and then upwards with its revival.
For all that, Knoll’s contributions to the world of modernist interiors had its limits. The furniture is and always was expensive, and the space planning and design Knoll performed was generally commissioned only by large corporations. The vernacular was thus an upper-middle-class one. Though Knoll might have inspired countless knockoffs, all the way down (or up) to IKEA, owning a piece of Knoll furniture remained a status symbol that showed that you were not only wealthy enough to pay its sticker price, but also had enough education and discernment to know such a piece was worth buying.
That the sensibility is now trickling down to the interiors of cheap motels and even fast food restaurants is a tribute to its power and its logic. That the work remained as consistent and consistently good enough to have such an influence is a tribute not only to Florence Knoll’s design talent, but also to her managerial proficiency, her salesmanship, and her strong sense of the importance of good design in our daily life.
