Saarinen Outdoor Dining Tables

Eero Saarinen  1957

Shaping the experience of space

While studying at Cranbrook Academy of Art in the 1930s, Florence Knoll and Eero Saarinen forged a lasting friendship. The connection between these avid students of design evolved into a partnership that produced some of the most revered furniture pieces of the 20th century.

Eero Saarinen insisted that, in any design, “confusion comes from trying to amalgamate several conflicting ideas.” To avoid that confusion, in his furniture, as in his architecture, Saarinen sought the essential idea and represented it formally with clarity and strength, always striving for “consistency and relatedness of all parts.”

In the early 1950s, he turned his attention to the “ugly, confusing, unrestful world” he believed resulted from “the slum of legs” underneath typical tables and chairs. In 1957, he realized his ideal of formal unity with the Pedestal Table and Tulip Chair collections for Knoll. These majestically effortless, one-legged tables and chairs have since become symbols of modern design and mainstays of the Knoll design legacy.