The office seating segment of the furnishings market has always been a significant portion of Knoll’s overall marketing and production operations. In the mid-1980s, the Diffrient Seating Collection had been selling well, while the Stephens Office Seating Collection had underperformed and been discontinued. The Pollock, Zapf and Sapper chairs continued to fulfill the upper management seating niche. Knoll was compelled to examine the needs of general office seating for the 1990s for a multitude of functions and find a platform that might conceivably serve them all
Much like Andrew Morrison and Bruce Hannah, Dale Fahnstrom and Michael McCoy were design professors and practicing designers when they decided to form a design partnership in 1984. Fahnstrom graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a bachelor’s and master’s degree Industrial Design. McCoy graduated from Michigan State University with a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design, and obtained a master’s in Industrial Design from Wayne State University. He would later go on to become co-chair of the Cranbrook Academy of Art Design Department.
In 1985, Fahnstrom-McCoy Design Consultants received an invitation from Knoll’s Vice President of Design, Jeffrey Osborne, to participate in a design competition for the next-generation multiple function office chair. McCoy had done several designs for Knoll previously that had reached the prototype stage, and Osborne included Fahnstrom and McCoy on the list of design firms to receive Knoll’s design brief and submit proposals.
Knoll had contracted with Forrester Research to conduct focus groups and perform other research to help formulate the design brief that would be submitted to the competing design firms. McCoy remembers the comprehensive scope of the design brief, which exceeded one hundred pages.
“Some of the requirements included maximum adjustability for many body types and preferences,” McCoy said, “a soft seat and a firm adjustable back. One of the potential clients was the FAA who wanted it for their control towers. That meant the chair had to be easily adjustable for three different aircraft controllers per day 24/7 and be extremely durable. That is why it far exceeded the Business and Institutional Furniture Manufacturers Association (BIFMA) standards for usage.”1
Within the office environment, the new chair needed to be able to meet the requirements of an executive chair, management chair, operational chair, high task chair, and share visual cues to permit use as a visitor, or side chair. Except for the Side Chair and the Professional Chair, separate seat and back were crucial to having the thicker seat, thinner and firmer back, and have the capability to make the needed range of adjustments.
“We wanted to make the adjustments as intuitive as possible…while seated,” McCoy stated, “to feel directly when it feels right by simply lifting the back to your preferred position and letting it go. We also added a unique forward tilt option for those who lean forward over their desk while working. Except for the visitor chair, these variations were all mounted on a custom-designed recline mechanism that included a knee pivot so your legs are not lifted off the floor, and simulated hip pivot with a synchronized tilt for the seat and back in which the seat tilts back eight degrees while the back tilts back sixteen degrees.”2
The separate seat and back also permitted something new that apparently had not been done before. McCoy explained, “We conceived the adjustable back as extending down below the back of the seat to avoid the ‘lollipop’ look of adjustable back chairs at the time.”3
This design feature also permitted different widths and heights of the seatback to reflect the chair’s category as desired by Knoll for executive, management, operational and high task chairs. An added benefit was having a seatback upholstered in an optional contrasting color, but this was decided later.
The two designers constructed prototypes from their drawings under the direction of David van den Branden, which validated their design ideas and permitted human factors acceptance from five percent to 95 percentiles. After months of internal design development and prototype construction, Fahnstrom and McCoy completed their proposal to Knoll for the new chair, sent it off—and waited. Knoll carefully evaluated all the design proposals, and the winning proposal was awarded to Fahnstrom and McCoy.
Activity now shifted to the collaborative effort between Knoll and the two designers. McCoy, having worked with Knoll previously, was familiar with the process. Knoll’s Design Development Group now worked on the aspect known as Design for Manufacturing, and development revolved around refining the chair’s complex tilt, recline, seatback adjustment and seat raise and lower mechanism. Pre-production units were assembled and rigorously tested for comfort, reliability and durability.
Knoll had typically given the name of the designer or designers to the chair, table or other product for the new catalog offering, with some exceptions. The designers naturally welcomed this, and Knoll had found this had worked quite well over the decades. Carl Magnusson, who had joined Knoll in 1976 and was then Director of Design for Europe, remembered Knoll’s Chairman, Marshal Cogan, was the driver behind this chair’s name.
“Marshal Cogan wanted a name that would be memorable and break with the convention of using the designer’s name,” Magnusson wrote. “Within that context of rebranding, the chair collection—which was esthetically not gracious but had a ‘friendly’ appearance—was intended for an association of emotional and physical comfort, something you can rely on, like man’s best friend.”4
McCoy stated the name for the chair, Bulldog, was conceived by Tibor Kalman of M & Company, the New York graphic design company. Promotional materials for the chair included a standup display with a bulldog.
Knoll introduced the Bulldog Chair at the 1990 NeoCon in Chicago. Not content to have the typical exhibit, with a name like Bulldog, marketing director David Bright brought a bulldog to that year’s event, and it proved to be brilliant marketing indeed.
The Bulldog Chair would go on to win an array of design awards in the early 1990s. During its nearly twenty-year production life, over one million units were sold.5
1. Michael McCoy interview, October 24, 2023.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Carl Magnusson email message to author, January 21, 2024.
5. Knoll Designer Bios: Dale Fahnstrom. https://www.knoll.com/designer/Dale-Fahnstrom.