Florence Knoll Bassett

Dates of Birth and Death

Birthplace

Education

• Cranbrook Academy of Art, 1934–35
• School of Architecture, Columbia University, 1935
• Architectural Association, London, 1938–39
• Armour Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology), 1940–41

Years of practice

Affiliations/Firms

• Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1940
• Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer, 1939–40
• Raymond Loewy, Herbert Bayer, Richard M. Bennett, Harrison, Abramovitz, and Fouilhoux, 1941–43
• Hans G. Knoll Furniture Company, 1940–46
• Knoll Associates, Inc., 1946–68

Major projects

• Rockefeller Family Offices, Rockefeller Plaza, New York City, 1946
• Knoll showrooms: New York, 1951; Paris, 1951; Stuttgart, 1952; Chicago, 1953; San Francisco, 1954; Dallas, 1956; Milan, 1956
• General Motors Company Technical Center, Warren, Mich., 1956
• Connecticut General Life Insurance (interiors), Bloomfield, Conn., 1957
• Look magazine offices, New York City, 1957
• Heinz Headquarters, Pittsburgh, circa 1958
• H.J. Heinz Research Center and Offices (interiors), Dearborn, Mich., 1959
• Knoll showrooms: Los Angeles, 1960; Miami, 1961
• CBS Building (interiors), New York City, 1963

Awards, honors and press

• Good Design Award, Museum of Modern Art, including 1950, 1953
• First Award from American Institute of Decorators, 1954
• AIA Gold Medal for Industrial Design, 1961
• International Design Award, American Institute of Interior Designers, 1962
• Total Design Award, American Society of Interior Designers, 1977
• RISD Athena Award for Creativity and Excellence, 1983
• Inducted into the Interior Design Magazine Hall of Fame, 1985
• Honorary Degree, Doctor of Architecture, University of Miami, 1995
• National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, 2002
• Honorary Degree, Doctor of Letters, University of Vermont, 2004
• Design Excellence Award from Collab: The Group for Modern and Contemporary Design at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004
• Russel Wright Marketing of Modernism Award, 2005
• Doctor of Humane Letters, College of Design, University of Minnesota, 2008

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