Warren Platner

Sensuous Modernism

CONVERSO presents an interior from a lost 1989 residential commission in Greenwich, Connecticut by the iconic postwar American architect and designer, Warren Platner.

The expressive and sinuous brass lighting, marble and brass table forms, and unique glass seating system illustrate what the critic, Paul Goldberger, called Platner’s 'Sensuous Modernism'. This late modernist sensibility, culminating in the original Windows on the World interior and overshadowed by Postmodernism, developed during his work with Eero Saarinen and Kevin Roche on such seminal projects as the Ford Foundation Building and eventually led to Platner’s expressive steel and wire furniture series, continuously produced by Knoll since 1966. The prototype for the Knoll steel and wire Platner ottoman will be on view, as well as a unique and monumental credenza in rosewood and bronze, designed by Platner and executed by Lehigh Leopold.

A large scale Harry Bertoia Sunflower sculpture, along with Bertoia jewelry from an important American collection, creates a dialog between two modern alchemists able to transform the mineral into the organic. A Herbert Bayer wall tapestry completes the exhibit.