on October 01, 2008 at 5:32 AM, updated ZEELAND -- That sit-down job could get healthier for workers if they land in the new Embody office chair from Herman Miller Inc. That's the claim for the mind-body connecting design being unveiled today, touted as the descendent of the company's top-selling Aeron chair. Embody targets the wiggly worker who lives with laptops, flat-screens and wireless devices. All those technologies boomed after Aeron hit the scene in 1996. Now, the company said, Embody is better equipped to enhance health and productivity for people in these techno times. No small task for an office chair, even at $1,595. "The chair is like prosthetic legs, for a healthy person," project engineer Chris Hill said. A three-layer seat of springy plastic topped by "pixelated" plastic discs spreads the load better than traditional foam or mesh materials, he said. "We're confident you can improve the circulation in a person's lower extremity," Hill said.
Herman Miller sent the prototype and a competing design to three university and rehabilitation testing centers to compare an occupant's back support and circulation. Embody is the last design from the late Bill Stumpf, who created or co-designed the Aeron, Ergon, and Equa work chairs. His legacy led to his reputation as the father of modern ergonomic seating. In 2002, Stumpf told Herman Miller: "I think I have one more in me." Inspired by a uniquely comfortable pair of shoes, Stumpf pursued the new chair design with protege and partner Jeff Weber. After Stumpf died in 2006, Weber, 45, evolved the design at his Minneapolis-based Studio Weber & Associates. One significant feature of the new chair is an exposed spine-like flexing structure for the backrest. The back moves with 56 flexors to support the occupant, and the seat cushion is topped with 93 connected plastic discs, or pixels, to move as the sitter moves. "See how the chair resembles the spine, in an S?" said Jeff Jansma, director of new product commercialization.
"The back looks like a person's back in profile. There's a terrific difference in thoracic and cervical curvature." Other facets, including a backrest narrowed at the top and extendible depth for the seat, give laptop and keyboard users more freedom to move. The decision to unveil Embody at the October Orgatek show in Germany is symbolic, and practical, Jansma said. For one thing, that is the show where Aeron first appeared. "It's a platform for us, as Aeron was," he said. Had Herman Miller rushed to introduce Embody at the June NeoCon show in Chicago last summer, customers would have heard: "Don't forget, in three months, you can order it." Although some long-standing clients got early production versions of the chair in June, manufacturing starts in earnest this month, with 60 chairs a week made at the company's Greenhouse factory in Zeeland. By February, the company plans to open Embody production in the United Kingdom. By next summer, Herman Miller will build the chairs at the Ningbo, China, plant for the Asian market.
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At Creative Office Pavilion, we make space happen! Take a peek at our photoshoot day… we had a lot of fun! Video: make space happen.Take a peek at our photoshoot day… we had a lot of fun! Originally designed by Gordon Chadwick of the Nelson Office to consolidate manufacturing facilities, the Herman Miller Headquarters is now known as the Main Site and comprises almost 750,000 square feet of space on 103 acres in Zeeland, Michigan, where the company has been located since its beginning in 1905. The single story, red brick structures, employee courtyards, and nearby ponds fit well on this former farmland. The mix of manufacturing and office space has been the company's headquarters since its opening in 1958. The simple, "modern" style of the exterior has been maintained throughout the additions to the original structure, from the modest front entrance to the Energy Center, a pioneering environmental effort added in 1982 to burn waste and generate electricity. The horizontal windows and skylights bring natural light to all areas.
Several employee courtyards surround the buildings, and the main courtyard houses the Herman Miller Watercarrier sculpture by Native American Allan Houser, which honors all employees with twenty years of tenure. A structural steel spine connects buildings added after 1958 and terminates at the Energy Center. In the mid-1950s, facing the need to consolidate manufacturing operations and the prospect of growth in sales of Herman Miller design classics from the offices of internationally-known designers like Charles Eames and George Nelson, the company bought a farm in Zeeland, Michigan. The company's leaders were determined not to waste "perfectly good farmland" on a short-lived commercial structure. The original building served first as a chair plant. The Nelson Office, led by Gordon Chadwick, designed the first building at Herman Miller's Main Site and a master plan. Building B-East opened in 1958. The one-story brick building fit well with the site and allowed for future expansion.
Access to daylight, covered truck wells, and common finishes and furniture in office and plant areas were three of the company's progressive requirements for the building. Chadwick's five-building master plan guided growth for a decade. California architect A. Quincy Jones developed a new master plan in 1970. Expansion and alterations to Main Site continued, including an Energy Center, a Computer Center, and the conversion of eighty-eight thousand square feet of manufacturing space to offices. In a company known for design, ergonomics, and office furniture, Main Site was also called upon to function as a demonstration of Herman Miller products and progressive attitudes about people, architecture, and the interplay between the two. CEO and chairman Max De Pree, son of Herman Miller founder D. J. De Pree, became the company's guiding thinker about architects and architecture. One of his goals for the company's buildings was "indeterminacy," the ability of a structure to change and adapt over time.