Knoll Saarinen - Womb® Settee

Designed by Eero Saarinen in 1948, the fit-for-two settee was not part of the designer's famous trio—the Model 70 Womb Chair, Model 71 Executive Arm Chair and Model 72 Executive Armless Chair—but, rather, developed in anticipation of Saarinen’s first big architectural commission: The General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Michigan—a twenty-five-building complex that required furnishings for over 5,000 people.

Knoll decided to revisit the design in 2012. Design Director Benjamin Pardo remembers it as a trying experience. "We encountered all the same challenges they had in the late 1940s,” says Pardo. Like many of Saarinen’s furniture designs, the Womb Settee required production techniques and materials still in the infancy of their existence. Intended to stand up to heavy use within a corporate interior, the flexibility of the plastic shell, an asset in the Model 70 and 72 designs, proved problematic in the Model 73. Ultimately, Pardo and his team prevailed and the piece was welcomed back in 2015.

Of the clumsy, oversized models the Womb Settee was designed to replace, Saarinen wrote, “These dreadnaughts [have] disappeared from modern interiors partly because they were designed for an era that tried to impress by sheer mass." While such robust forms may have gone out of vogue, Saarinen saw their necessary function as timeless: “The need for such chairs has not passed. Today, more than ever, we need to relax."

A Womb Chair fit for two. We are very pleased to welcome the Womb Settee back to the Knoll line up. The design went out of production, but never out of style. The double-wide design is the perfect modern refuge for the living room or office.

MEASUREMENTS:

• Width: 159.3 cm / 62.7 inch
• Depth: 86.3 cm / 34 inch
• Height: 90.2 cm / 35.5 inch

MATERIALS:

• Seat shell is foam-covered molded fiberglass
• Base is steel rod with polished chrome or black paint

HELPFUL NOTES:

• The surround and cushions may be specified with split upholstery. To order split upholstery please contact us here
• Greenguard Indoor Air Quality Certified®

Eero Saarinen

Finland, 1910 – 1961

Eero Saarinen, was born in 1910 in Finland and in 1923 the family emigrated to the US. He studied architecture at Yale, graduating in 1934. A Yale scholarship enabled Saarinen to travel to Europe but he returned to the US in 1936 to work in his father’s architectural practice. When his father died in 1950, Eero Saarinen took over the practice. Saarinen taught at Cranbrook Academy where he met Charles Eames in the late 1930s. Experimenting with Eames, Eero Saarinen co-developed new furniture forms and the first designs for furniture made of molded, laminated wood. In 1940 Saarinen and Eames took part in the “Organic Design in Home Furnishings” competition mounted by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

For Knoll International Saarinen designed a great many pieces of furniture, including the 1948 Womb Chair, which was designed to make those seated in it feel as secure and cozy as a fetus in the womb. The Pedestal Group, dating from 1955-56, is collection of chairs and tables made of plastic and featuring only one central leg ending organically in a round disc on the floor. The very successful Tulip Chair belonged to this group. Eero Saarinen says he wanted to abolish the “miserable maze of legs.” In 1951 he designed the Saarinen Collection for Knoll, consisting of the still popular line of Executive Chairs. These chairs transformed the notion of what executive seating could be with its sculptural form and modern finishings.

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