Neils Diffrient

As a design learning school, Cranbrook Academy of Art had a profound impact on Knoll and its furniture designs in the latter 20^th century. Florence Schust attended there and was greatly influenced by the Saarinens. Neils Diffrient enrolled in Cranbrook in the fall of 1948 and took on a dual major course of studies in architecture and design. His professor of architecture was Eero Saarinen. During the summer of 1949, Diffrient worked in Saarinen’s design studio, not far from the Cranbrook campus. By that time, Saarinen had produced two chairs for Knoll—the Grasshopper and, more importantly the Womb Chair and Ottoman introduced in 1948.¹

Saarinen was at work on a new office chair for Knoll. Diffrient was immediately put to work translating the architect’s sketches and drawings first into clay form studies. “It was clear Eero had studied sculpture and we both enjoyed refining the shape of the wrap-around backrest that was unique to the chair,” Diffrient wrote. “Our objective was to get the form of the seat and backrest, including the arm supports, into a final clay shape. Then we would cast this form in a plaster mold which we could cast a final duplicate in plaster.”²

During the design development of this chair, eventually assigned the moniker Model 71, Hans and Florence Knoll would visit Saarinen’s design studio to review progress on the designs within the 70 Series. Diffrient was overwhelmed by the sophisticated persona of the Knolls.

“Hans Knoll was like nobody I had ever seen before,” Diffrient wrote. “His presence and manners were thoughtful, non-confrontational and yet determined. Shu, to my surprise, was very curt and restrained compared to Hans.”³

The Knolls had not yet purchased the building in Pennsylvania that would be the new manufacturing facility for the company; production of Knoll furniture was still in New York City. When the plaster forms for the chairs were shipped to the Manhattan factory on East 72^nd Street, Saarinen sent Diffrient there to supervise start of production, knowing it would be a learning experience as wekk for the design and architecture student. Hans Knoll personally took Diffrient to the manufacturing floor, who was surprised by the level of manual labor involved in the furniture being manufactured. The Saarinen No. 71 chair was introduced in 1950.

While attending Cranbrook, Diffrient continued to help in the Saarinen design office during summer breaks on various projects until he graduated in 1953. He worked in the greater Detroit area for the next year and in 1954 went to Italy on a Fulbright grant. He might have stayed there but in 1955, he received a letter from the office of industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. Diffrient was offered a position with the famous design firm, and he chose to return to the United States to accept the offer. Dreyfuss had offices in New York City and Pasadena, California. Dreyfuss wanted Diffrient to work on a Lockheed commercial aircraft project, and he moved to California.

Diffrient spent the next 25 years working on projects that included aircraft seating, telephones, Honeywell thermostats, John Deere tractor, the Polaroid Land Camera, and two human factors reference works, The Measure of Man and Humanscale. During the 1960s, Diffrient oversaw the interior design of the United California bank in Los Angeles. For a significant percentage of the seating, desks and other furnishings throughout the multistory bank building, Diffrient specified Knoll and the orders were sent to the Knoll Los Angeles showroom. Robert Cadwallader was regional sales manager of southern California with his office in the Los Angeles showroom at the time and met Diffrient to complete all the purchase orders for the bank project. Cadwallader was impressed to learn Diffrient had worked in Saarinen’s studio during his years at Cranbrook and specifically on the No. 71 and No. 72 chair.⁴

Years passed, and Cadwallader rose into management positions at Knoll, moved to New York, and became president in 1971. In the mid-1970s, Diffrient moved to New York, bought a loft in Manhattan on West Broadway and redesigned and remodeled the interior. He brought with him his sketches he had made starting in 1970 to address several issues with reclining office chairs using articulating frame members within the seat and back cushions.⁵ These furniture ideas remained dormant until Diffrient and Cadwallader got reacquainted.

“He began to encourage me to design something,” Diffrient wrote, “perhaps seating, for Knoll. He knew I had not designed any commercial furniture since my days with Eero Saarinen. He thought I should reenter the field.”⁶

Diffrient was still a partner in the Dreyfuss design firm in the late 1970s, (Henry Dreyfuss had died in 1972) and worked in the New York office. Wanting to follow Cadwallader’s suggestion but avoid a conflict of interest, he worked on his new chair designs in his studio at the loft. For these reasons, Diffrient and Cadwallader mutually agreed a formal contract was premature until Diffrient’s chair design was further developed and a prototype was eventually constructed.

While Diffrient was working on design development of an executive office chair on his own, he was concurrently working on new airport lounge seating for American Airlines, one of the Dreyfuss office’s longtime clients. Diffrient had been involved in the new American Airlines corporate identity for aircraft livery, aircraft interior seating and cabin design. The airline wanted new seating for its departure gates. Diffrient designed a new rigid shell of stamped steel, covered in urethane foam with replaceable stretch fabric cover; these seat assemblies were mounted on a steel tube beam that included armrests and vertical supports on each side.

Knoll became the manufacturer of this public seating system, then Diffrient was approached by Knoll management and the Design Development group to adapt the steel shell seat to a range of office desk chairs. Diffrient objected, stating the airport seating was designed for short-term occupancy and not acceptable for individual seating for hours at a time. Knoll was attracted to the relatively low-cost manufacturing of the seat and impressed with its comfort. Adapting it to a pedestal base was a simple matter, it was argued. Diffrient acquiesced.⁷ Knoll signed Neils Diffrient to design for them, and the designer now saw a financial future offering a steady royalty income that would eventually allow him to leave the Dreyfuss organization and strike out on his own.

This was when Diffrient countered with the advanced executive seating design he had been working on privately. He described to Knoll and showed drawings and sketches of the internal mechanism that permitted tilting the chair while the person’s feet remained on the floor. In addition to this, Diffrient proposed a new means of lowering and raising the seat, and these two design principles would have an industry-wide effect.

“The best of these [principles] was the new recline action that did not lift the users’ feet off the floor,” Diffrient wrote. “Most chairs at that time did cause this undesirable effect but, because it was commonplace, it was generally accepted as standard. My unique recline principles avoided this problem entirely, which I believe set a new standard which was to be universally adopted by most competition. The other unique performance feature was the use of the gas cylinder, variable height column on a swivel base chair. At the time, I knew of no other American product that had used it.”⁸

The age-old and time-consuming method of lowering or raising the chair by means of a threaded shaft in the stem of the chair was still employed in the late 1970s by Knoll in its desk chairs. The lever-activated pneumatic cylinder to adjust seat height was first adopted in 1970 by designer Wilhelm Ritz of Germany for his No. 232 chair manufactured by Wilkhahn.⁹ Knoll incorporated the pneumatic seat height adjustment across most of the Diffrient Seating Collection, with a few models using the screwpost adjustment.

From 1977 into 1979, Diffrient worked with Knoll’s Design Development Group on the Diffrient Seating Collection. This included the steel shell Workstation Series  Management Chair, Operational Chair, Professional Chair, Side Chair and the Multiple Seating Series, and the articulated frame Upper Management  and Executive Series.¹⁰

Interiors magazine featured a cover story in the October 1979 issue with Diffrient shown seated in a Management Chair, surrounded by the entire seating collection.¹¹ The Diffrient Seating Collection was introduced by Knoll that year and remained in production until 2000.¹²

1. Neils Diffrient, Confessions of a Generalist. (Danbury: Generalist Ink LLC, 2012). 38-39.
2. Ibid. 39-40.
3. Ibid. 38.
4. Eric Larrabee and Massimo Vignelli, Knoll Design. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1989). 223.
5. Diffrient, 113.
6. Ibid.
7. Nanette L. Laitman, interview with Niels Diffrient, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, Washington, DC. July 28-August 31, 2010.
8. Diffrient, 116.
9. Jonathan Olivares, A Taxonomy of Office Chairs. (New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2011), 43.
10. Advanced Diffrient Seating brochure. Knoll International, 1987.11. Barth David Schwartz, “It Pays to be Diffrient.” Interiors, October 1979.
11. Barth David Schwartz. “It Pays to be Diffrient.” Interiors, October 1979.
12. Brian Lutz, Knoll – A Modernist Universe. (New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 2010). 195.