Florence Knoll a Michigan born architect trained at Cranbroook Academy of Art, the Architectural Association in London and at the Illinois Institute of Technology, where she was a student of Mies van der Rohe. In 1946 she married Hans Knoll and worked along side him in his business as a space planner and designer.

It was understood that Knoll Associates business would focus specifically on modern design, but they added to this the Bauhaus philosophy that they would exclusively make products that "represented design excellence, technological innovation and mass production."