American furniture producer Knoll has commissioned photographer Adam Jason Cohen to shoot its re-editioned black, white, and archival dark red Bauhaus-era collections at significant locations throughout Los Angeles.
The revised products include the MR Chair and Table by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; the Wassily Chair, Cesca Chairs, and the Laccio Table by Marcel Breuer.
According to Knoll, the colours were chosen to closely reflect the historic art and design school’s visual identity. It is the first time the furniture pieces were produced in an ultra-matte finish.
“In the early years of the Bauhaus, Mies van der Rohe had painted his chair frames in white and a deep red,” said Knoll senior vice president of design Jonathan Olivares.
“After seven decades of Knol’s Bauhaus classics being produced exclusively in chrome, seeing the pieces painted is like seeing them for the first time again”
According to Knoll, locations including USC School of Architecture’s Edward Killingsworth-designed Watt Hall were selected as backdrops for Jason Cohen’s photo shoots because they provided a contemporary yet historically referential reframing of the products.
“The locations are abstracted urban environments made of concrete, tubular steel, and glass – the industrial materials emphasised in Bauhaus architecture,” said Knoll director of brand creative Suzanne Michaels,
“Their slabs, curves, and planes reflect the silhouettes of the products as well as the core geometries of the architectural style.”
According to Michaels, the images intentionally skew the sites themselves to focus on the materials, colours, and forms.
“In the campaign, we see the contemporary products side-by-side with architectural details reminiscent of the Bauhaus School in Dessau,” she said.
“The Wassily Chair in black leather with a dark red frame reflects the schoo’s iconic red and black staircase,” said Michaels.
Designed by the school’s founder Walter Gropius in 1925, the Bauhaus Dessau building in Germany was constructed using reinforced concrete, glass curtain walls, and balconies with tubular steel balustrades.
“When you look at these furniture designs in isolation, you immediately see forms that could almost mirror the vignettes of the environments we placed them into,” said Jason Cohen.
Other locations used for the photoshoots include The Venice Beach Skatepark and a commercial plaza in Koreatown also frequented by skateboarders.
“We felt that it was important to highlight and complement these design cues in both the objects and spaces through contrast; harsh straight lines of the Wassily in front of the sweeping nine-foot pool of concrete at the Venice Beach skatepark,” said Jason Cohen.
Knoll was founded in New York in 1938 and in 2021 merged with other American furniture giant Herman Miller, creating a joint company called MillerKnoll.
Other recent creative projects by Knoll include the commission of designer Noel Mercado to augment Marcel Breuer chairs with car parts.
The photography is by Adam Jason Cohen, courtesy of Knoll
