(Dis)Continuing a Legacy: How Three Italian Women Architects Transformed the Knoll Look

Abstract The American-based furniture firm Knoll is known as an avant-garde enterprise established in 1938 by Hans Knoll. Not much later, Florence Schust joined the company and significantly defined what became known as the Knoll look of the 1950s. Today she is considered a key example of a highly talented woman architect who, according to her own recollections, was early on directed toward designing interiors because of her gender. Her pioneering contributions to the design profession continue to be underlined in historiography and rightfully so. However, this article shows that she was not the only woman architect who had a significant impact on the company’s image in the second half of the twentieth century. Through a case study on one of the company’s earliest subsidiaries—Knoll International Italy—three other women architects come to the fore: Lella Vignelli, Gae Aulenti, and Cini Boeri. Each contributed to the rebranding of Knoll’s identity from the late 1960s onward through exhibition and showroom design in the US and Europe. Taking a transnational perspective on Knoll’s company history enables us to assess to what extent these women architects continued or discontinued the legacy of Florence Knoll.