Florence Knoll: The Most Influential Figure In Office Design

Florence Knoll is arguably one of the most influential figures in office design during the post-war period, setting the standard for a modern corporate interior of the day. (knoll website) This level of renown was achieved not only through the design vision, furniture, and showrooms of Florence Knoll herself, but also that of the group of designers she directed, called the Knoll Planning Unit ( I am not a decorator)
Florence Knoll was born Florence Schust in Saginaw Michigan, in the year 1917. Throughout her life, Knoll attended many educational institutions for short periods of time, not finishing a degree until 1941. However, this was not detrimental or careless, as it afforded her the opportunity to interact with many of the most influential modern architects of the time, such as Eliel Saarinen, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and Mies Van der Rohe. The first educational institute that Knoll attended was the Kingsbrook School for Girls from 1932 -1934, where she first demonstrated an interest in architecture and design. After finishing at Kingsbrook, she spent a year at Cranbrook Academy of Art under the direction of Eliel Saarinen (I am not a decorator). Saarinen integrated design practices from the Arts and crafts movement into the curriculum at the Academy of Art.() In the following years, Knoll studied at the School of Architecture at Columbia University, and again at Cranbrook before going to

Knoll consolidated her commitment to the modernist aesthetic and Bauhaus ideology in 1940 when she went to work in the office of Bauhaus