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Florence Knoll Bassett, Designer of the Modern American Office, Has Died (nytimes.com)
41 points by aaronbrethorst on Jan 26, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



That's sad to hear, but I was unaware she was still alive. I'm a huge fan of the Knoll design ethos - a few years ago I purchased a Barcelona chair [1], and it remains my favorite piece of furniture for reading.

If you are ever in New York and want to take a gander at some of the iconic pieces in person, the Design & Decoration Building has a Knoll showroom. A few years ago I also saw many Knoll pieces in a modern furniture exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, but I don't think that's still showing.

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1. Technically Knoll didn't design the Barcelona, that was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe almost a century ago. But Knoll licensed the design and commercialized it.


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You act as if Knoll pioneered open offices specifically to slight you. When Knoll was getting started the modern population of software engineers didn't exist. You can't reasonably lay your grievances with tech office design at the feet of a design agency which fostered the movement half a century ago.


This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


You went way too far.


Regardless of this woman's unfortunate passing, open offices are seriously ruining millions of peoples lives.


Doesn't this seem just a tad hyperbolic? If open offices are "seriously ruining" millions of peoples' lives, then what in the world is abject poverty doing to them?

In the universe of things that could ruin someone's life, working in an open office floor plan ranks pretty low. Don't turn inconveniences into catastrophes.


No offense meant or anything, but living to 101 is hardly an "unfortunate passing". I can only hope to have a life so long. And yeah, open offices are a plague passed to its employees as community when it's really cost savings. Still, a bit rude to so callously celebrate a person's death, but such is life (and death).


Open offices are great for some kinds of work, just not for programming or most technical work.




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