American furniture brand Knoll has asked Berlin-based architect Sam Chermayeff to expand Florence Knoll’s 1961 credenza into a family of bookcases, bar cabinets and tables.
Named Knoll Chermayeff Storage, the collection takes the low credenza that Florence Knoll designed in 1961 as its starting point and extends its language into new furniture types for contemporary homes and workplaces.
Adaptive reuse
As a direct evolution of the original, the collection keeps the strict structural logic of steel, wood veneer and marble while introducing new forms and proportions.
Knoll creative director Jonathan Olivares described the project as a form of adaptive reuse. Rather than reproducing the original, it treats Florence Knoll’s system as an architectural vocabulary that can be expanded and rearranged around the way people now live, work and entertain.
“Florence Knoll was a genius in how she used materials,” Chermayeff told Wallpaper*. The architect has a long family connection to the brand: his father, graphic designer Ivan Chermayeff, led Knoll’s rebranding with Tom Geismar in the early 1990s.
Bookcase, bar and tables
The range includes a tall open bookcase, a bar cabinet, a coffee table, a side table and a console. The bookcase extends the system vertically, adding height to a room and acting as a divider. The bar cabinet turns storage into a focal point for entertaining, with a mirrored upper half and a glass rack.
The coffee table, side table and console bring storage to lower furniture types through concealed, push-to-open drawers. All pieces are finished on every side, so they can be placed in the middle of a room.
New colours
Visually, the furniture keeps the clean geometry and rigour of the 1961 credenza. Chermayeff adds expression through changes in proportion and new lacquer colours, including Dark Red Ultra, Dark Python and Iris.
The side table is offered in five wood veneers, from ebonised ash to Oxford walnut, as well as deep red, green and blue lacquers, with tops in seven types of marble. Chermayeff suggested pairing a lighter top with a darker body, and named chrome, maple veneer and white marble as the most classic combination.
The approach reflects the architect’s long-standing interest in shared living, positioning storage as infrastructure for communal spaces. The collection is available through Knoll and its sister brand Design Within Reach.
Source: 77 Global Furnishings Media
