Richard Meier

A graduate of Cornell University, Richard Meier worked at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill as well as for Marcel Breuer before founding his own practice in 1963. Meier, among the most celebrated second-generation modernists, was part of the “New York Five” — a label coined by Arthur Drexler to describe the Corbusian influences that Meier, Peter Eisenman, Michel Graves, Charles Gwathmey and John Hejduk all exhibited in their work from the early 1970s. Meier’s seminal project, the Getty Center in Los Angeles, exemplifies his signature aesthetic. Meier was awarded the esteemed Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1984.

In the early 1980s, Meier approached Knoll with a chair he had initially designed for the Guggenheim reading room. Seeing the design’s potential, Knoll commissioned Meier to explore further. The resulting collection incorporated Meier’s own philosophy of design with the influence of 20th century masters like Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh to create a wonderful example of physical comfort, quality construction, and pure design.