Florence Knoll Bassett

Saluting design pioneer Florence (Schust) Knoll Bassett '34, graduate of Kingswood and Cranbrook Art Academy. She was the first of our alumnae to immerse herself in the influences of our exceptional campus and creative mentors and go on to blaze new trails in design. Rest in peace, Florence, your designs are eternal.

From the New York Times: 

"Florence Knoll Bassett [was] a pioneering designer and entrepreneur who created the modern look and feel of America’s postwar corporate office with sleek furniture, artistic textiles and an uncluttered, free-flowing workplace environment...

To connoisseurs of Modernism, the mid-20th-century designs of Florence Knoll, as she was known, were — and still are — the essence of the genre’s clean, functional forms. Transcending design fads, they are still influential, still contemporary, still common in offices, homes and public spaces, still found in dealers’ showrooms and represented in museum collections."

Read the complete article here.