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Through the generosity of Decorative Arts Trust members to the Dewy Lee Curtis Scholarship Fund, the Trust is now able to give an annual research grant to a graduate student. Bobbye Tigerman, a Winterthur Fellow, received this grant last summer.
With generous assistance from the Decorative Arts Trust, I have been able to pursue research relating to the career of architect and designer Florence Knoll (1917-) and her activities as founder of the Knoll Planning Unit, the interior design and space planning arm of Knoll Associates. (Fig. 1) Florence Knoll was a remarkable woman who had an influential role in the development of postwar American design. She combined an impeccable taste with concern for productivity to create corporate workspaces that continue to be striking in their refinement and modernity. I would like to thank the members of the Decorative Arts Trust for supporting numerous research trips to examine the Knoll corporate archives in New York City, the Florence Knoll Bassett papers at the Archives of American Art in Washington, and the Knoll Museum and Archive in East Greenville, Pennsylvania. In addition, I used Trust funds to interview several designers who worked for Knoll living in New York and Pennsylvania.
Florence Knoll trained at the Cranbrook Academy of Art with Eliel Saarinen, at the Architectural Association in London, and at the Illinois Institute of Technology with Mies van der Rohe. She worked in the architectural offices of Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer in Cambridge and Harrison & Abramovitz in New York City. In 1943 she was hired by Hans Knoll to design interiors for his nascent furniture company. They married in 1946. Florence Knoll was an equal partner in Knoll Associates, Inc., and in addition to running the Planning Unit, also founded the textiles division, designed furniture for the line, and designed showrooms. She served as President of the organization from 1955 and Director of Design until her retirement in 1965. She had a shaping role in all aspects of the Knoll company. The Planning Unit was not simply selling interior design services, but solutions for a modern corporate environment. A brochure states that the Planning Unit “grew out of a demand by private and architect-clients to provide interiors in which the concept embodied in the Knoll line of furniture and fabrics is carried to its logical conclusion: fusion of architectural space and its contents.”1 Florence Knoll and the Knoll Planning Unit thus established a modern method and look for corporate interior design by addressing individual client needs and using signature furnishings and decorative elements.
The Planning Unit was founded in 1944 but did not have an active project docket until the 1950s. 2 When the Knoll showroom moved to 575 Madison Avenue in 1951, the Planning Unit was allocated space there. While the composition of the Planning Unit staff changed over its life, it typically included the director Florence Knoll, her secretary, seven or eight job captains, and two draftsmen.3 The Planning Unit primarily designed spaces for institutional clients such as universities, hospitals, and corporations. Notable commissions include the Rockefeller family offices in 1946, a redecoration of the CBS offices in 1952-54, the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company campus in 1956-57, and the interior design of the 1961-65 CBS skyscraper in Manhattan. Two characteristic techniques of the Planning Unit design process deserve some mention. The first is the role that the showrooms played in the promotion of Planning Unit interiors. (Fig. 2) The showrooms offered an idealized space to display Knoll furniture and interiors without programming limitations. Florence Knoll designed each showroom and used these opportunities to articulate the distinctive look associated with Knoll. This look is comprised of the limited but bold use of primary color, fully articulated elements with shadow lines between planes, and the use of sculptural furniture by designers such as Eero Saarinen, Harry Bertoia, and Richard Schultz. The furniture configurations and color schemes present in the showrooms would often guide Planning Unit installations, making the showrooms a place to display and promote the furniture and textile lines.
The second characteristic technique employed by the Planning Unit was the creation of a paste-up to present proposed designs to the client. The paste-up is a scale bird’s-eye or elevation view of an interior with swatches of fabric pasted to each surface to suggest the appearance of the finished room. Florence Knoll learned this technique at Cranbrook and pioneered its use in interior design applications. This method gave both a spatial and tactile sense of the room. The paste-up of Frank Stanton’s 1954 CBS office survives in the Florence Knoll Bassett papers at the Archives of American Art (Fig. 3). The 1961-65 CBS commission to design the interior spaces of the 35-story Eero Saarinen skyscraper in New York represents an archetypal and culminating example of the Planning Unit’s work. The Planning Unit designers were forced to design within a circumscribed space that had already been laid out. They worked with Frank Stanton, an enthusiastic and supportive client with whom they had worked before on previous CBS projects. They were faced with a variety of design problems, from executive offices requiring extensive media needs, a hierarchy of lounge and seating areas, and clerical spaces. The building is known as Black Rock for its black granite and dark glass façade. It is located at 51 West 52nd Street in New York City. Upon Saarinen’s sudden death in 1961, the Knoll Planning Unit was contracted to finish the interiors. The interior architects Carson, Lundin and Shaw had divided the building into five-foot modules which would be the basis for the interior plans.4 The Planning Unit was responsible for the third to the 35th floors.5 With the building designed and interior modules set up, the Planning Unit’s job was to select color schemes, furniture, fabrics and art for the building.6 The wall behind the reception area on each floor was vibrantly colored.7 (Fig. 4) Most furniture used was designed by Florence Knoll, although no new furniture was designed for the project. Desks, credenzas, and coffee tables had articulated tops and legs such that each element was expressed.
One of the Planning Unit’s hallmarks was the domestication and humanization of office space. Executive offices by the Planning Unit often resemble living rooms in the selection and disposition of furniture. In lieu of desks and filing cabinets, executives would often sit at a table with a credenza behind for storage. Lounge areas within the office would often feature Mies van der Rohe or Florence Knoll-designed sofas and coffee tables. This impression of the living room-inspired office was heightened by the use of a variety of textiles and materials, from bronze velvet wallcoverings to beige linen curtains to oak or walnut paneling. Frank Stanton’s office on the 35th floor represents a focal point of the CBS building and Planning Unit design. (Fig. 5) Stanton sat at a pedestal desk with a bronze base and oak top. Behind him was a low wood and marble-topped credenza for storage. He sat on a Mies van der Rohe Brno chair, produced by Knoll. Stanton’s office suite also included a reception room, pantry, dining room installed with Tiffany stained glass windows, dressing room and bathroom. As the final project of the Knoll Planning Unit before Florence Knoll’s retirement, the CBS building represents the culmination of the refinements that the Planning Unit had implemented in past projects and stands as evidence of the transformation in corporate interior design realized by the Planning Unit.
This research will serve as the basis for a Master’s thesis in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. The completed thesis will include expanded analyses of Florence Knoll’s furniture and other Planning Unit interiors. Florence Knoll Bassett is also being honored by Collab: The Group for Modern and Contemporary Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art with the 2004 Design Excellence Award. An exhibition designed by her of her work entitled Florence Knoll Bassett: Defining Modern opened on November 17, 2004 at the PMA. I would like to deeply thank the members of the Decorative Arts Trust for their support and welcome inquiries tigerman@post.harvard.edu 1 From “Text for Planning Unit Brochure,” Knoll Archives. 3 Conversation with Allan Denenberg, August 16, 2004. 4 “Design at CBS,” Industrial Design 13 (February 1966): 51. 6 “Distinguished Interior Architecture for CBS,” Architectural Record 139:7 (June 1966) 129-34. |
