Florence Knoll

Florence created the modern look and feel of America’s postwar corporate office with sleek furniture, artistic textiles and an uncluttered, free-flowing workplace environment. The company she formed with her husband, Knoll Associates, grew to become the leading innovator of modern interiors and furnishings in the 1950s and 1960s, transforming the CBS, Seagram and Look magazine headquarters in Manhattan. Her “total design” favored open work spaces over private offices, and furniture grouped for informal discussions. It integrated lighting, vibrant colors, acoustical fabrics, chairs molded like tulip petals, sofas and desks with chrome legs, collegially oval meeting tables, and futuristic multilevel interiors, more architectural than decorative, with open-riser staircases that seemed to float in the air.

In 1961 she became the first woman to receive the Gold Medal for Industrial Design from the American Institute of Architects. In 1983 she won the Athena Award of the Rhode Island School of Design. In 2003, President George W. Bush presented her with the nation’s highest award for artistic excellence, the National Medal of Arts.

from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Knoll

cf.: http://www.walterknoll.de/de/unternehmen/geschichte