Knoll Inc.

Andrew B. Cogan has served as a director since February 1996 and assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer of Knoll, Inc. in April 2001 after serving as Chief Operating Officer since December 1999. Mr. Cogan has held several positions in the design and marketing group worldwide since joining us in 1989, including Executive Vice President—Marketing and Product Development and Senior Vice President. Mr. Cogan is also a director of the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Kathleen G. Bradley has served as a director since November 1999. She assumed the role of President and Chief Executive Officer, Knoll North America, in April 2001 and retired from Knoll in May 2008. Her prior responsibilities at Knoll included serving as our President; as Executive Vice President—Sales, Distribution and Customer Service; and as Senior Vice President and Divisional Vice President for Knoll’s southeast division. She began her career with Knoll in 1979.

Barry L. McCabe was appointed as our Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer in May of 2002, after serving as Senior Vice President, Treasurer and Controller since January 2000 and serving as Vice President, Treasurer and Controller since January 1995. Prior to joining us in August 1990, Mr. McCabe worked with a number of Westinghouse business units during his 16 year career at Westinghouse.

Arthur C. Graves has served as our Senior Vice President—Sales and Distribution since 1999. He began his career with us in 1989 and has held several senior sales management positions with us since that time. Prior to joining us, Mr. Graves was with Herman Miller, Inc. from 1979 to 1989 where he held several sales and management positions. Mr. Graves’ career in the contract office furniture industry has spanned 25 years.

Harry A. Tipping, Harry A. Tipping, Partner, graduated from Gannon College and The University of Akron School of Law with a Juris Doctor. He served as Editor-in-Chief of the Akron Law paper, Arete, from 1969-70. He is the founder of Tipping Co., L.P.A., which operated for 34 years in Northeast Ohio, until merging with Stark & Knoll. With over 36 years of legal experience, Harry has litigated cases for hundreds of clients including: insurance companies, funeral homes, construction companies, hotels and homeowners associations. Harry specializes in insurance defense work and represents many nationally known insurance providers. His practice involves complex civil litigation in the fields of labor, employment, business and personal injury defense. He is a member of the Akron Bar Association; an Advocate in the American Board of Trial Advocates, Federation of Insurance and Corporate Counsel and Defense Research Institute; a Charter Fellow of the Akron Bar Association Foundation; and is listed in Who's Who in American Law and Who's Who in the Midwest. An active member in the Akron community, Harry is a member of St. Vincent's Parish where he serves on the Parish Finance Committee. In addition, he is the President of the Board of Trustees for the Catholic Universe Bulletin. Harry is a member of Stark & Knoll's Litigation and Employment Group.

Benjamin A. Pardo was appointed as our Senior Vice President and Design Director in September 2005. Prior to joining us, Mr. Pardo was President of Unifor, Inc., where he had been employed since 1988.

Although born in Sweden, Carl Magnusson grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. He studied architecture and design at the University of Idaho and at the Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. In 1966, he moved to Los Angeles and joined the office of Charles Eames. He later worked as a designer for an architectural office, eventually opening his own studio there. In 1976 Magnusson joined Knoll as Director of Graphics and Showroom Design and was promoted to Director of Design for Europe shortly thereafter. He directly designed Knoll showrooms in London, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Zurich, Florence, Rome, Amsterdam and Turin. Magnusson?s responsibility grew in 1993 when he was named senior vice president, director of design worldwide, then executive vice president, director of design in 2003. He also began the Knoll Design Symposium, held annually at the Cranbrook Art Academy during the mid-1990s, and is co-founder and director of the Knoll Museum in East Greenville, Pennsylvania. Magnusson has also designed the Magnusson desk in its three different forms, Uptown, Midtown and Downtown, the RPM chair and Spello Execututive desk.

Mike has been a Member of the Delta Chi Educational Foundation Investment Advisory Committee since 2007. Mike was initiated into Delta Chi in March 2004 and went on to serve as "B" of his pledge class and "A" and "E" of the Syracuse Chapter. He was also a Founding Father, and was subsequently elected "A", of The Ohio State University Chapter. Mike served two years as a Member of the Delta Chi Law Committee and was a Vice-Regent for Regions V and VII. Mike previously served as "BB" for the Cornell Chapter and is currently the Live-In Advisor/House Director for The Knoll, Cornell's Chapter House. Mike currently serves as President of the Cortland Chapter Alumni Board of Trustees and is a Member of the ABT and Alumni Interfraternity Council at Cornell. Mike is an Associate at Merrill Lynch & Co. in Ithaca, NY and serves as a Member of the Board of Directors for The Country Club of Ithaca (NY).

A LEED Accredited Professional, Henry is the architecture and design manager for Knoll in the Denver region. She has also consulted with several Fortune 100 companies providing strategic workplace analyses and has published numerous articles on high-performance corporate work environments and green building strategies. A member of the ASID Student Advisory Council, Henry has been a member of other Society-level committees including the ASID Legislative and Codes Council and the ASID Foundation Development Council. An ASID Chapter Medalist recipient, Henry has been President of the ASID Colorado Chapter and the Colorado Interior Design Coalition. She is an interior design program advisor for the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and a past board member for the college's foundation.

Anne Beetz?s originality began with her unconventional training: visiting college in Paris, studying at the ?Ecole Superieure d?Art et d?Architecture de la cambre? in Brussels, working at the Brussels Design Center, where she discovered textile design, and traveling through North and Latin America, her sources of inspiration. Drawing upon such diverse experiences and her handweaving skills, Beetz?s designs are often lustrous, mixing materials and crossing stripes for a thoroughly unique look and feel. Her textiles, wallcoverings and panels were released by Knoll in 1989 as the Anne Beetz Collection.

Although first educated at art schools in Berlin and Hamburg, Anni Albers? ideas and skills flourished during her time at the Bauhaus school, from 1922 to 1930. There she studied, taught and practically led the textile department. Beginning in 1959, Albers brought stylistic innovation to the Knoll use of fabric, complementing the company?s ever-developing identity. After World War II, she and her artist husband Josef Albers moved to Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

Barbara Iannucci is Director of Sales & Marketing for Meadows Office Furniture, an organization that provides the furnishings for corporate interiors. They are Haworth's top-ranked dealer in the United States, consistently outperforming their competition. Barbara has an in-depth knowledge of the contract furniture industry, having worked for both manufacturers as well as dealer organizations for the last 16 years. Throughout her career her focus has been on cultivating an understanding of customers needs, defining project requirements, and coordinating with architectural firms to make sure that all of her clients' expectations are fully realized and exceeded. She has completed numerous projects that span all industry and market segments, with Fortune 500 companies among their ranks. Barbara has a B.A. in Political Science from Queens College. She is also a member of CoreNet.

Charles Pollock worked in George Nelson's office after receiving a bachelor's degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute. In addition to his work for Knoll, he has designed chairs for Thonet and Castelli.

Davis Allen was one of the talented few responsible for the emergence of interior design as a real profession in post-World War II America. Educated at Brown University, the Kungliga Tekniska in Sweeden and Yale University, Allen worked at the Knoll Planning Unit. He also worked in the offices of industrial designer Raymond Loewy and the architecture firm of Harrison and Abramowitz, which served as master planners for the United Nations and Lincoln Center, among other sites. Subsequently, Allen was longtime director of interiors for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He designed furniture for Steelcase, GF, Stow Davis, Bernhardt, Stendig and Hickory Business Furniture and was elected to the Interior Design Hall of Fame.

The daughter of prominent architect and designer Gianfrano Frattini, Emanuela has built her career upon her own accomplishments. After receiving her master's in architecture at Milan Politecnico, she worked for Charles Pfister's London office and Tibor Kalman in New York before she opened her self-titled design and architecture firm, EFM, in New York City. With accomplishments in fields as varied as architecture, industrial, interior and graphic design, Frattini designed the award winning Knoll Propeller table system.

Emilio Ambasz?s successful career began with his legendary studies at Princeton University, where he earned an undergraduate and master?s degree in architecture in just two years. Since then, he has helped pioneer green architecture as an economical, sensible and attractive mode of design and living. With his Visor stacking chair for Knoll or any of his genre-crossing architectural works, Ambasz consistently constructs his works as extensions of nature and the human form. Ambasz was the MoMA curator for the famous exhibitions ?Italy: The New Domestic Landscape? and "The Taxi Project." He has many credits to his name, as the director of design for Cummins Diesel, designer of several lamps, pens, suitcases, author, critic, and member of the MoMA board of design for architecture and design.

Enrico Baleri studied, although never graduated from, the University of Milan and soon afterwards formed the design company Pluri. In 1979 he designed the Coloforte table system for Knoll. That same year he founded the design company Alias, which he would direct artistically until 1983, and produced works by Philippe Starck, Alessandro Mendini and Hans Hollein, among others. In 1982 he designed the Mega tables for Knoll, and then founded his studio, Baleri and Associati.

Ettore Sottsass studied architecture at the Politecnico di Torino and established a studio in Milan in 1947. In 1982, he organized Sottsass Associates the group responsible for the Memphis Movement. Associates Aldo Cibic, Marco Zanini and Matteo Thun worked with Sottsass to develop a wide range of products for Clego Munari, Fusital, Zanotta, Artemide, Swid Powell, Olivetti and Poltranova. Sottsass has won numerous awards, including the Compasso d'Oro.

While a student at the Kingswood School on the campus of the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Florence Knoll Bassett (nee Schust) became a protegee of Eero Saarinen. She studied architecture at Cranbrook, the Architectural Association in London and the Armour Institute (Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago). She worked briefly for Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer and Wallace K. Harrison. In 1946, she became a full business and design partner and married Hans Knoll, after which they formed Knoll Associates. She was at once a champion of world-class architects and designers and an exceptional architect in her own right. As a pioneer of the Knoll Planning Unit, she revolutionized interior space planning. Her belief in "total design" embracing architecture, manufacturing, interior design, textiles, graphics, advertising and presentation and her application of design principles in solving space problems were radical departures from the standard practice in the 1950s, but were quickly adopted and remain widely used today. For her extraordinary contributions to architecture and design, Florence Knoll was accorded the National Endowment for the Arts' prestigious 2002 National Medal of Arts.

After graduating in architecture at Milan Politecnico, Franco Albini worked simultaneously in fields of furniture, product design, architecture, urban planning and interior design. His sentiments as a rationalist architect translated into remarkably transparent furniture designs, which display a knowledgeable use of materials while presenting their internal structure and processes of production.

This Pritzker Prize-winning architect recently turned the Basque backwater of Bilbao into a household name with his miraculous, titanium-wrapped structure for the Guggenheim Museum's most ambitious outpost. The confidence with which he has expanded the vocabulary of architecture is clearly demonstrated in his furniture designs. Frank Gehry studied architecture at UCLA and pursued graduate studies at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. He later worked as a designer with Victor Gruen Associates, Robert and Co. Architects in Atlanta, Pereira and Luckman in Los Angeles and Andre Remondet in Paris. For Knoll, he created the bentwood furniture collection (1989) and the FOG table and chair (2000). He has also collaborated on projects with sculptors Richard Serra and Claes Oldenburg. His buildings include the California Aerospace Museum and Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Fish Dance Restaurant in Kobe, Japan, the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhine, Germany, and the Experience Music Project in Seattle. His collection of cardboard furniture, Easy Edges, set a new precedent for the use of materials. He has been on the faculty at Harvard and Yale, and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. Mr. Gehry has been the subject of several exhibitions, including a recent retrospective at New York's Guggenheim Museum.

Italian architect and designer Gae Aulenti studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. A member of ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale), she has taught at the Politecnico di Milano. She has designed furniture, lighting, textiles, showrooms, stage sets for opera and the interior of the Musee D'Orsay, Paris. She has participated in numerous Triennale di Milano, winning many awards. She is an honorary member of the American Society of Interior Designers.

Gerald Abramovitz first studied architecture at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and then design at the Royal College of Art in London. He briefly opened his own office in Johannesburg and received second prize for his cantilevered armchair by the British Furniture Manufacturers Association. He later worked for Knoll, designing his armchair which in 1963 won an international furniture competition. He also developed a cantilever desk lamp for Best and Lloyd, now a part of MoMA?s permanent collection.

An architecture graduate of Milan Politecnico, Gianfranco Frattini became an industrial designer by default when he lacked appropriate lighting and furniture for his interiors. In 1956 he co-founded the ADI, Associazone per il Disegno Industriale. During his distinguished career, he collaborated with Gio Ponti, worked for Cassina and Acerbis, designed lamps for Artemide, was a board member of the Triennale di Milano, designed for Knoll and won many gold medals and other prizes. He is a member of the generation that made up the Italian design movement in the late 1950s through the 1960s. His work for Artemide resulted in the Boa lamp together with Livio Castiglioni, and the Megaron lamp as well as several furniture collections for Cassina and exhibits for Ferrari.

As Gretchen Bellinger enters her 30th year as a leader in the interior textile industry, she continues to challenge and delight with a fabric collection that, at once, defines the times while embracing a classical sensibility. It's this quality - a masterful duality - that sets Bellinger apart. With the eye of an innovator and the heart of a purist, she has created an entirely new lexis in the world of textile design; straddling a paradox that today has become her signature. This is no where more evident than with the introduction of her latest fabrics. Combining the state-of-the-art with the "tried-and-true," Bellinger has emboldened her collection with daring new palettes, innovative print and weaving techniques, and an array of natural and synthetic textiles. In doing so, she has made the familiar fresh, and has given even her most visionary designs an appealing warmth and accessibility. Bellinger was influenced in her early years by her chemical engineer father, who instilled in her not only a keen sense of organization, but a desire to look beyond mere convention; to understand that the way people lived impacted the products they needed or sought. After graduating from Skidmore College and receiving her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bellinger joined Skidmore Owings & Merrill's Chicago office, where she developed many of the aesthetic sensibilities she continues to draw upon today. It was there - working among the likes of Walter Netsch, Bruce Graham and Myron Goldsmith - that Bellinger first perceived a gap in the interior textiles market. By 1975, after working in sales and marketing for Knoll and V'Soske, Bellinger produced her very first collection of thirteen natural-fiber fabrics, including the much-revered Limousine Cloth broadcloth.

Italian sculptor, university lecturer and furniture designer Harry Bertoia displayed a unique stroke of genius with his patented Diamond Chair for Knoll International in 1952. Bertoia was an inventor of form and an enricher of furniture design with his introduction of a new material: he turned industrial wire rods into a design icon. Educated at Detroit Technical High School, the Detroit School of Arts and Crafts and Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Bertoia taught metal crafts at Cranbrook. He worked with Charles Eames to develop his signature molded plywood chairs. Eero Saarinen commissioned him to design a metal sculptured screen for the General Motors Technical Center in Detroit. His awards include the craftsmanship medal from the American Institute of Architects, as well as AIA's Gold Medal.

A lifelong fascination with fabrics and fashion led Jhane Barnes to the Fashion Institute of Technology. She designed modern textiles for the evolving Knoll collection from 1983 to 1989, combining classic designs with 1980s sensibilities. Barnes has established herself in both commercial textile and fashion design, and at age 24 became the youngest ever and first female winner of the fashion industry?s coveted COTY award.

Jorge Ferrari Hardoy was born in Buenos Aires in 1914. He received his degree in architecture from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1939. He had lived the previous year in Paris, where he worked with le Corbusier in the development of the "Plan Director para Buenos Aires." On his return to Buenos Aires he became an active participant in the creation of CIAM Argentina and Grupo Austral. He is probably best known internationally for his BKF chair, designed together with Juan Kurchan and Antonio Bonet in 1939. Ferrari-Hardoy remained active as a designer, architect, and city planner until his death.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe began his career working in his father's stonemasonry business. After an apprenticeship with furniture designer Bruno Paul in Berlin, he joined the office of architect Peter Behrens, whose work presaged the modern movement. In 1912, Mies established his own office in Berlin, and later became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund and Director of the Bauhaus. He immigrated to the United States in 1938, setting up a practice in Chicago. His buildings include the German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona Exposition, the Tugendhat Villa in Brno, Czechoslovakia, the Seagram Building, designed with Philip Johnson, a cluster of residential towers along Chicago?s Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, and the Illinois Institute of Technology campus, where he was the director of architecture.

Since earning his architecture degree at Beaux-Arts, Marc Alessandri has spent much of his career designing commercial buildings in and near his native France. His winning design for the French Ministry of Culture competition was manufactured by Knoll as the Alessandri System, an interchangeable office system that has endured since its introduction in 1986.

Protege of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer embodied many of the School's distinctive concepts and was one of the School's most famous students. He returned shortly thereafter to teach carpentry from 1925 to 1928, and during this time designed his tubular-steel furniture collection: functional, simple and distinctly modern. His attention drifted towards architecture, and after practicing privately, he worked as a professor at Harvard's School of Design under Gropius. Breuer was also honored as the first architect to be the sole artist of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Wassily chair was named after his Bauhaus roommate Wassily Kandinsky, the Cesca after his daughter Francesca.

Frequently cited as a benchmark of modern cross-national design, Lin draws influence from Japanese gardens, American Indian earthen mounds, her parents and her architectural design training at Yale University. While studying there as a senior, Lin won a nationwide contest for her controversial design of the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. Her career has been marked by her memorials, public spaces and keen sense of simple, elegant beauty. These elements are gracefully displayed in her work for Knoll, which includes outdoor seating stones, a chaise lounge and side chair. In 2003, Maya Lin won the Finn Juhl award for good design.

Pascal Mourgue had been a wood sculpture student at L'Ecole Boulle and pursued his interest in design and interior architecture at L'Ecole Nationale des Artes Decoratifs in his native France. In 1985, he developed the Pascal table system of conference tables, designed to be easily and attractively combined and interchanged to suit new commercial needs, especially those of the emerging home office. Lauded for his modern yet timeless style, Pascal Mourgue's product designs for both home and office illustrate his belief that utility and fine art are not mutually exclusive. A consummate artist, Mourgue's designs extend well beyond the realm of furniture to include sailboats; crystal, glass and ceramic objects; showrooms and houses.

Paul Aferiat attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he received his Bachelor of Architecture in 1975. He began his architectural training in the offices of Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer and Giorgio Cavalieri. He later worked in the offices of Richard Meier and Partners Architects, on projects that included the Suarez Apartment, the Aye Simon Reading Room in the Guggenheim Museum and the Hartford Seminary Foundation. In the office of Gwathmey Siegel and Associates he was the associate in charge of the American Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut, and other commercial and residential projects.

As a strong proponent of modernist philosophy, award-winning Cuban-born designer Raul de Armas applied fundamental architectural principles to his furniture design. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in architecture, he joined prominent architecture firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill in 1967, with whom he is now a partner. Since joining the firm more than thirty years ago, de Armas has won international fame and prestige for his work in the architectural industry. In the late 1980s, Knoll began production of the Palio collection of office accessories designed with Carolyn Iu and acquired with Smokador, and the classic de Armas chair. In all his work, he strikes a deft balance between architectural art and science from which emerges a synergy of structure, interior space and function. In 1984, Interiors magazine named him Designer of the Year.

An Italian architect and designer and graduate of the Politecnico di Milano, Sergio Asti established a studio in Milan in 1953. He became a founding member of ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale). He has designed furniture, lighting, glassware, wood products, ceramics, electrical appliances, interiors, stores and exhibitions, and has lectured widely. Asti has received numerous prizes, including the 1962 Compasso d'Oro. His work has been exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Tim van Campen studied at Philadelphia?s Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. His career has been punctuated by several exhibitions, like that at the University of Maine.

Warren Platner studied architecture at Cornell University. Following his work with legendary designers Raymond Loewy, Eero Saarinen and I. M. Pei, he immersed himself in the creation of steel wire furniture, devising the method and tooling to produce the lounge chair in the line as well. Notable among his residential and commercial projects are the Georg Jensen Design Centre and the Windows on the World restaurant in the World Trade Centre, both in New York City.

A graduate of the Staatlichen Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste in his hometown of Stuttgart, Germany, Wolf Bauer?s fame began with accolades for his domestic freelance work. Bauer?s pieces have been exhibited frequently and heavily awarded because of the boldness they brought to an often tame industry. His first collection, introduced by Knoll in 1969, was unconventional in many regards; silkscreened on cotton velvet in a range of colors, it featured abstractions of natural forms on cloth pieces 47 inches wide.

John F. Maypole became a director effective December 17, 2004.. Mr. Maypole has, for the past 19 years, served as an independent consultant to various corporations and providers of financial services. Mr. Maypole is also a director of MassMutual Financial Group, Church and Dwight Co., Inc. and Dan River Inc.

Kewsong Lee has served as a director since February 1996. Mr. Lee is a managing director of Warburg Pincus LLC, where he has been employed since 1992. Mr. Lee is a director of Arch Capital Group Ltd., The Neiman Marcus Group, Inc., TransDigm Holding Company, TransDigm Inc. and several private companies.

Stephen F. Fisher has served as a director since December 2005. Mr. Fisher has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Entercom Communications Corp. since November 1998. Prior to joining Entercom Communications, Mr. Fisher was a managing director of a private equity firm located in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania.