Dining Table attributed to Florence Knoll for Roche Bobois, 1960s

American architect-designer Florence Knoll Bassett (née Schust) was born in 1917 in Saginaw, Michigan. Orphaned as a child, she was educated at the Kingswood School for girls, part of the Cranbrook community of schools cofounded by Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen and Detroit publisher George Booth. Saarinen personally encouraged Florence to attend the Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she focused on architecture until 1939, leaving for periods to study at the Columbia University School of Architecture in New York and the Architectural Association in London. In 1940, she studied under Ludwig Mies van der Rohe at the Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and worked for architects Marcel Breuer and Walter Gropius. The next year, she moved to New York and worked for the interior design firm Harrison & Abramovitz, through whom she met modern furniture manufacturer and retailer Hans Knoll (1914–55). Knoll recruited her as head of Knoll Planning Unit and, in 1946, she married him. That same year, the company changed its name to Knoll Associates.

At Knoll, she was an influential champion of established Bauhaus designers and architects as well as rising talents such as Harry Bertoia. As a designer and architect in her own right, she designed tables , chairs , sofas , and storage solutions  and was a major proponent of ergonomics in interior space planning and the total integration of furniture, architecture, art, graphics, and textiles. In 1951, the company was renamed Knoll International and it expanded its business overseas. On the death of her husband Hans in 1955, she took over as company president. Three years later, she married banker Henry Hood Bassett. Knoll Bassett served as Director of Design at Knoll until her retirement in 1965. She was honored with a National Medal of Arts in 2002 and, in 2004, donated her design archive to the Smithsonian Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.

In 1950, French businessman Jacques Roche opened a furniture store on Rue de Lyon in the center of Paris, and was later joined by his two sons, Philippe and François. At the same time in the same city, Patrick and Jean-Claude Chouchan established a furniture store of their own on Boulevard Sébastopol, Au Beau Bois. The future business partners didn’t meet until 1960 at the Scandinavian Furniture Fair, held annually in Copenhagen. Deciding to go into business together, the Roche and Couchan families co-designed their first collection of furniture, introducing both their brand and the Nordic aesthetic  to the French market. The following year, a nationwide advertising campaign was launched through Elle magazine, as well as a new brand identity formed from both sides’ names: Roche Bobois.

Coinciding with the arrival of the television in many homes, the 1970s marked the beginning of a new era in furniture design: the (figurative and literal) centrality of the sofa . Capitalizing on increased demand for comfortable sofas and loungers, Roche Bobois collaborated with artist-designer Hans Hopfer, who designed a modular seating system for the French company. The Mah Jong Sofa (1971) epitomized the growing importance of relaxation in the home and the informalization of furniture. It was composed of three separate pieces and, based on the user’s preference, the Mah Jong could morph into a sofa, a lounge chair , or a bed. To this day, it is Roche Bobois’ best-selling sofa.

Roche Bobois continued to create innovative furniture, including the collections Les Provinciales (1980s) which was inspired by traditional French furniture and Les Voyages (1990s), which looked outward to France’s former colonies, and was designed in response to a growing demand for ethnic style furniture.

Today, Roche Bobois counts over 250 stores in 50 different countries, with furniture collections spanning sofas, armchairs , cocktail tables , dining chairs , sideboards , beds, and accessories including lighting , cushions , and rugs . Over the decades Roche Bobois has collaborated with many important contemporary designers including Ora Ito, Cédric Ragot, Sacha Lakic, Christophe Delcourt, and Stephen Burks, as well renowned fashion houses as such as Jean Paul Gaultier (for its 50th anniversary), Sonia Rykiel, and Missoni.