Happy Birthday to trailblazing interior designer, architect, and furniture designer Florence Knoll Bassett (b. May 24, 1917, in Saginaw, MI), who greatly influenced the development of the modern American office space. After graduating with her Bachelor of Science in architecture she married furniture salesman Hans Knoll in 1946 and together as equal partners they developed the design firm Knoll Associates. Their enterprise took off after commissioning an office workplace project for the influential Nelson Rockefeller. Other high-profile clients followed. After her husband’s tragic death in 1955, Bassett took over the entirety of the company. She sold the company and its affiliated assets in 1959, to retire and enjoy the fruits of her corporate success. However, the president of CBS Frank Stanton then recruited her to design the new CBS office building, which was completed in 1965. Coming as it did as the culmination of her career, this became her biggest legacy project and set a gold standard for modern American office spaces.
Citations: Phillip G. Hofstra, “Florence Knoll, Design and the Modern American Office Workplace” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 2008), 43-44, 50, 58-59, https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/bitstream/handle/1808/5240/Hofstra_ku_0099D_10035_DATA_1.pdf?sequence=1; Holger.Ellgaard, “In 1956, Knoll introduced Eero Saarinen’s tulip chairs and pedestal table,” photograph (location unknown, 2008), Creative Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saarinen_Tulpanstolen.jpg#/media/File:Saarinen_Tulpanstolen.jpg.
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