Comfort for the office

A comfortable office worker is a productive office worker, and that workplace truism is being reinforced this fall with new products from major office furniture manufacturers that emphasize user-friendliness resulting from leading-edge design thinking.
American furniture giant Knoll earned a gold award last June at the annual Chicago NeoCon trade fair for their newest task chair, Generation. Designed by New Zealand-based Formway Design, Knoll’s new Generation chair features a flexible yet durable high performance elastomer plastic seat and back that reflects the many different seating postures – from formal to relaxed – used by office workers over the course of a day. Chair adjustments are intuitive and the responsive plastic is available in colours such as firecracker red, lemongrass green, and espresso brown. Like most office chairs made today, Generation also has sustainable features, which in this instance include recycled content and Greenguard® certification for its absence of toxic finishes.
Knoll competitor Herman Miller has also recently introduced a task chair designed to up the ante on user-friendliness. The American firm’s new Embody chair employs a complex grid of plastic supports visible on the back exterior that are intended to mimic the human spine and provide constant lower back support. The design was initiated by the late Bill Stumpf (designer of Herman Miller’s legendary Aeron chair) and completed by colleague Jeff Weber. The company says Embody imparts a “floating feeling” to users thanks to reduced pressure points, resulting in increased blood and oxygen flow for better productivity. (Well, they may mean the opportunity for better productivity. It may also depend on how you slept the previous night.) Embody is made of 42 percent recycled content and is almost completely recyclable at its end-of-use.
The German-designed Setu chair from Herman Miller is another new task chair with a unique back support. A responsive, lightweight, polypropylene plastic spine – visible in profile – conforms to the body shape of individual users. An elastomer plastic seat covering contributes support and also helps to keep the chair cool despite prolonged use. The new chair’s aluminum base is also eco-friendly.
New chairs by Toronto office furniture manufacturer Teknion include the Marini executive task chair and the Visio task chair. Marini, by Toronto area furniture designer Conrad Marini, features natural back support with custom options. The new Visio chair features a mesh back of plastic yarns and Teknion calls it the closest thing to a one-size-fits-all chair on the market.
Grand Rapids, Michigan-based Steelcase is complementing award-winning seating such as its Think® chair with a new category of collaborative seating. Intended for multiple users in contexts such as extended meetings or brainstorming sessions, the new Steelcase chairs Cobi and i2i emphasize user-friendly flex and intuitive controls.
The increasing use of home offices was an inspiration for Denizen, a desk system by Coalesse, a Steelcase brand. Winner of the gold award in the casegoods category at NeoCon, the new furniture system features wood finishes of ash, oak, and teak. Discreet features include recessed door pulls, self-closing cabinets and drawers, and wire management. Denizen’s environmental features include the use of sustainably harvested woods and low-volatile organic compound (VOC) finishes.
Antonio Citterio’s new Spoon office table for Italian furniture company Kartell is another new office product suitable for both corporate and home office environments. A co-design with frequent Citterio collaborator Toan Nguyen, the lightweight Italian folding table features a white laminate-finished honeycomb aluminum tabletop and thermoplastic legs.
More formal by Citterio is his new Skape executive leather chair, manufactured by Swiss furniture company Vitra. Available in low and high back versions, the new chair was used at meetings of the NATO summit last April in Germany.
Whether you’re a world leader or an office administrator, today’s office furniture companies are using leading edge design to increase the inherent comfort of chairs meant for extended use. The increasing trend towards home office use will also continue to inspire work furniture designs that are less corporate and more reflective of individual needs.