The makers
The Designers
The architects, engineers, and cabinetmakers who built the chairs, desks, and systems behind aviation's executive offices. Each profile traces what they made, and how it landed in a hangar boardroom.
1910 – 1961 · Finnish-American · Cranbrook, Michigan
Eero Saarinen
The architect who designed both the TWA Flight Center and the chair that sat inside it — Saarinen turned aviation interiors into total works of design.
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1907–1978 · 1912–1988 · American · Venice, California
Charles & Ray Eames
A husband-and-wife studio whose engineering of plywood, fiberglass, and aluminum produced the seating language of the modern executive.
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1921 – 2000 · American · Herman Miller Research Corp.
Robert Propst
The polymath inventor who imagined a liberated, modular office for knowledge workers — and watched it devolve into the cubicle.
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1936–2006 · b. 1936 · American · Herman Miller
Bill Stumpf & Don Chadwick
The designers who replaced the leather throne with mesh — and made ergonomics a credible language of executive power.
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Maple & Co. founded 1841 · British · Tottenham Court Road, London
Maple & Co. and the English Cabinetmakers
The Victorian workshops whose mahogany partner desks and Chesterfield seating set the visual grammar of executive power for a century.
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