January 30, 2019
The Soul of Knoll — In Memory of Florence Knoll Bassett
In 2001, Metropolis interviewed Florence Knoll Bassett and took a deep dive into archival photography, drawings, and sketches that reflect her design legacy.
On January 25, design visionary Florence Knoll Bassett passed away. Because of her outsize influence on the development of the modern office, as well as the incredible network of architects and designers that she worked with over the course of her illustrious career, her legacy has always been a mainstay of Metropolis’s coverage of the workplace and design at large.
However, the magazine surveyed her life’s work in two prominent articles. Most recently we marked the centennial of her birth by encapsulating her unique creative approach in “How to be Florence Knoll in 10 Easy Steps” (2017), which is available here. Prior to that, we devoted the cover of our July 2001 issue to “The Soul of Knoll,” dipping into archives for a substantial selection of historic images accompanied by a rare Q&A with Knoll Bassett herself. We are pleased to now make that article available online, embedded below.
You may also enjoy “How to be Florence Knoll in 10 Easy Steps.”