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Florence Knoll |
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Architect and designer Florence Knoll Bassett has had a profound influence on more than 50 years of buildings' interiors. Born in Saginaw, Michigan as Florence Schust and is known in familiar circles simply as "Shu". As a student at the Kingswood School on the campus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Knoll became a protegée of Eero Saarinen. She studied architecture at Cranbrook, the Architectural Association in London and the Armour Institute (Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago). She worked briefly for Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Wallace K. Harrison.
Shu is famous for her philosophy of "total design," and as the director of the Knoll Planning Unit she revolutionized interior space planning. Her approach of embracing everything about a space – architecture, interior design, graphics, textiles and manufacturing – was not the standard mid-century practice in space planning, but it caught on and continues to be the standard today. Shu was also a furniture designer, as well as a great eye for talent. It was under her leadership that many of the modern masters created collections for Knoll.
In 2002, Florence Knoll Bassett was accorded the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious National Medal of Arts.
Info: Knoll
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