KNOLL
In Production
KNOLL (working title) looks behind the public façade of Florence Knoll’s life to discover the complex person whose style is indelibly stamped on interior designs from the 1940’s to today.
Florence Knoll – The Enigmatic Woman Behind the Timeless Modernist Designs
The mid-century-modern “Knoll look” is seen today in millions of offices and homes around the world. But little is known about Knoll herself, reputed to be shy and self-effacing, yet tough and uncompromising. How did a shy, quiet woman win the business of major corporations like General Motors and CBS? Why was a tough, uncompromising person so beloved by employees, friends, and family? And why, at the peak of her powers, did she suddenly turn her back on the leadership position she had worked so hard to create?
In Production
Googie
Modernism for everyone. Googie architecture burst on the midcentury scene in the exuberant everyday buildings where modern people lived their car culture lives. Critics dismissed it, but today we see that Googie showed how modern architecture once belonged to all of us.
Nuance, not Nostalgia: With bright neon, bold rooflines, glittering stainless steel, colorful plastics, and glass walls the size of billboards, Googie seemed anything but subtle. But beneath the gleam lay the architects’ knowing response to a new pace for the modern city and a new architecture of communication.
Googie is a feature length documentary introducing a neglected chapter to the story of Modern architecture.
—Alan Hess, Architect
Googie: Futurism vs. Primeval
Googie design balanced unexpectedly between a high tech future of sweeping cantilevers and a verdant past of primeval nature. Rooted in the Organic architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright and practiced by leading architects of midcentury Los Angeles Modernism, Googie expressed a Modern way to live with technology that still has relevance today.