Photos ©Mark Hertzberg 2022
Steelcase and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation announced a new collaboration a week ago, in advance of Wright’s 155th birthday (June 8). The famous desk and desk chairs that Wright designed for the SC Johnson Administration Building (1936) in Racine, Wisconsin will get new life as Steelcase will “revisit, reinterpret, and reintroduce Wright’s designs, as well as co-create novel concepts rooted in his principles to provide products that enhance how we live and work today.”
The desks evoke the streamlined building itself:
Steelcase showed its appreciation for Wright giving them this commission during the Great Depression, when they were known as the American Metal Furniture Company, by purchasing and fully restoring Wright’s Meyer May House (1908) near their company headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The restoration, under the direction of Carla Lind, took from 1985-1987. Steelcase also bought the house next door and made it into the visitors’ center for the Meyer May House:
I thank Don Dekker of the Meyer May House for allowing Patrick Mahoney and me to photograph the house without other guests in it, during the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy conference in Grand Rapids in 2013.
The announcement about the collaboration between Steelcase and the Foundation:
Meyer May House:
https://meyermayhouse.steelcase.com
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Wright in Racine 