Architecture & design / Business & brands
Florence Knoll
1917–2019 · architect, interior and furniture designer
Michigan-born designer who grew up at Cranbrook's Kingswood School under the Saarinens' wing and went on to build Knoll into a modern furniture giant.
- Born
Saginaw, Michigan- Died
Coral Gables, Florida
aged 101- Birth name
- Florence Marguerite Schust
- Also known as
- Florence Knoll Bassett · Shu
- Detroit years
- 1932–1937
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Florence Schust was born in Saginaw and orphaned as a girl. In 1932 she was sent to Kingswood School Cranbrook, the girls' school in Bloomfield Hills, where Eliel and Loja Saarinen took her under their wing; she traveled with the family and grew close to their son Eero. A class project designing a house caught Eliel's eye, and she went on to study architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1934–35 and again after 1936, before further training in London and with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in Chicago. In 1946 she married Hans Knoll and became his partner in Knoll Associates, where her Planning Unit reinvented the corporate office with clean, rational interiors. Knoll produced furniture by her Cranbrook friends Eero Saarinen and Harry Bertoia, and the firm later opened a showroom in Southfield. She received the National Medal of Arts in 2002 and died in 2019 at the age of 101.
Highlights
- Attended Kingswood School Cranbrook, 1932–34
- Studied architecture at the Cranbrook Academy of Art
- Co-led Knoll Associates, producing Saarinen and Bertoia designs
- National Medal of Arts, 2002
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 1932–1934
Kingswood School Cranbrook
The Eliel Saarinen–designed girls' school she attended as a teenager.
Studied here · 1934–1935, 1936–1937
Cranbrook Academy of Art
Where she studied architecture under Eliel Saarinen.