Florence Knoll benches

American architect, furniture designer and entrepreneur Florence Knoll is born in 1917 in Saginaw, Michigan.

Florence Knoll was educated between 1932-34 at Kingswood School in Bloomingsville Hills and then for two more years at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the same town. There she studied with Eliel Saarinen, among others. A few years after graduating, she worked on furniture design with famous designers such as Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames.

From 1940, she works for other renowned figures in the field, namely Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. This would later lead to the opportunity to study further at the Illnois Institute of Technology in Chicago under the famous architect and designer Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Throughout her career, Florence Knoll has designed both buildings and furniture. Among her most famous architectural works are the Connecticut General Life Insurance building in Bloomfield and the interior of the CBS Building in New York

In 1946 Florence Knoll marries Hans Knoll. Less than ten years earlier, Hans Knoll had founded a furniture company that Florence began working for. Together they become partners in the joint venture Knoll Associates and build a new furniture factory in Pennsylvania. After a tragic car accident in 1955 in which Hans Knoll was killed, Florence took over the management and began designing chairs, sofas, tables and chests of drawers herself. At NO GA you will find a selection of Florence Knoll's furniture such as tables, benches, armchairs and sofas in a typically austere, American design from the middle of the last century.