Cults have been born from something as commonplace as a chair. Since 3,200 B.C., the time of the earliest recorded chairs in history, designers and architects have innovated and evolved the typology’s scale, form, and function. Perhaps one of the most recognizable designs remains Marcel Breuer’s 1925 Wassily and 1928 Cesca chairs, which became influential for its use of curving tubular steel inspired by bicycle frames. They arose alongside Mies van der Rohe’s 1927 cantilevered MR Chair and Table.

These designs were acquired by Knoll but are now launching in three new finishes: an archival dark red, white, and black. While the former, expressed in an ultra-matte finish, harkens back to a Bauhaus color that was originally offered in the MR Chair, the black and white shades recall how Bauhaus designers embraced the color palette for the ways they reflect and absorb light, accentuate geometric forms, and strengthen edges.

To celebrate the new finishes, Knoll partnered with photographer Adam Jason Cohen. Cohen—who has shot for the likes of Virgil Abloh, Nike, Arcteryx, Adidas, and Knoll previously—captures the chairs in schools in southern California. The locations’ curving architecture parallels the designs’ own sculptural quality, making for both an apt yet previously unseen site for the chairs. In one shot, for instance, the cylindrical concrete facade acts as a resonant backdrop for the MR Table, both born with a certain curvature and industrialism in mind.

Cohen and Knoll’s photographic campaign puts a contemporary lens on the Bauhaus designs. The photographs not only serve as a reminder of the dialogue between the furniture design and architecture that brought about these iconic pieces, but also the timelessness of Breuer and van der Rohe’s work—and, of course, of Bauhaus’s lessons overall.