Part of the Thrive Portfolio See how this product can contribute to your environmental goals. What's In It For YouThe first research-based ergonomic office chair, from the designer who brought ergonomics to the office furniture industry, now in its third generation. What hasn't changed: the comfort provided by the cushioned contours that create a pocket to support your body. Available in two sizes, to accommodate all kinds of office work. Thick cushions, deep contours, soft edges, and a high backrest to support the upper back and maintain the spine's natural curve. A full complement of easy-to-use adjustments to customize the chair to individual bodies and work activities. The waterfall front edge eases pressure beneath your thighs, and the Ergon 3 chair is easy on the arms too, with soft, naturally cantilevered armrests. When you lean back, your feet stay on the floor and the front of the seat doesn't rise, maintaining the correct pressure on your whole body.
The knee-tilt mechanism lets you move naturally between postures, from upright to reclined, maintaining easy, balanced motion. In updating the original Ergon chair, we preserved the pleasing aesthetic elements of the original, including the plush, cushioned comfort, the look of essential ergonomic design. We introduced the Ergon chair in 1976 after renowned designer Bill Stumpf conducted 10 years of research into how people really sit when they work. Stumpf's research focused on the following:Consultations with orthopedic surgeons and cardiovascular specialists to understand the effects of chairs and the seated posture on the body's circulatory system, muscles, and bones.Examination of the human behavior of sitting-the motions, actions, and posture patterns of people performing various tasks.Exploration of how work chairs can be designed to support a wide range of body heights, weights, and shapes effectively. The Ergon chair revolutionized office seating because it was designed for both comfort and health.
The chair quickly and easily adjusted to various body sizes and proportions, and it reduced physiological stress by providing exceptional spinal support and unrestricted blood flow. Because they sat at computers for long periods, air traffic controllers and NASA engineers were early fans. For the first time, businesses could provide their workers with seating designed for the way they really sat—not for the way someone thought they should sit. With the Ergon chair, we established the reference point for comfortable, healthful, and visually appealing ergonomic seating. In the years following the Ergon introduction, we continued our research. As offices became computerized, people increasingly needed chairs that provided comfortable and healthful support for task-intensive environments. As a result of ongoing research, in 1988 we introduced Stumpf's Ergon 2 chair, which featured even more refinements to support people who sit for long hours. The Ergon 3 chair does not represent a radical redesign of the original Ergon models.
Nor does it represent a departure from the ergonomic solutions provided by the Ergon and Ergon 2 chairs. Rather, it incorporates refinements and enhancements to meet the needs of a changing workplace and work force. Millions of satisfied customers around the world enjoy the extraordinary comfort and support of Ergon and Ergon 2 chairs. Today's workplace requires new work chair performance. The design criteria of the Ergon 3 chair respond to the greater variety of sizes and shapes in today's population, as well as the greater variety of activities individuals perform in a day. Continuous customer evaluation and feedback about previous Ergon models also drove enhancements incorporated into the Ergon 3 chair. Emerging seating codes and standards were major influences as well. And, of course, the Ergon 3 chair benefits from our 30 years of continuous research into ergonomic seating and the people who work in offices.Chairs Desk Task3 DeskWork ChairsOffice ChairsOffice Furniture99 HermanChair HermanChairs ErgonMiller 189ForwardErgon 3 Chair by Herman Miller by Herman Miller.
Herman Miller Ergon 3 Chair. The Ergon 3 Desk Chair by Herman Miller is designed to make any work day more pleasurable and productive. For those who spend most of their day doing computer-related work, this office chair provides beneficial cushioned comfort. Its soft edges and waterfall seat front are gentle on arms and legs, helping to maintain proper circulation. GREENGUARD certified, 80% recyclable and 27%... The revolution in ergonomicsthat's become a design icon Work chairs are popping up in all kinds of places from traditional work settings to co-working spaces and home offices. But no matter where you find them, your body and mind will benefit from the innovative support, alignment, and comfort of our ergonomic chairs.When Herman Miller rolled out the original Aeron Chair in 1994, it also launched a new paradigm in furniture design. Its designers, Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, built the Aeron according to what the body needs, not what the eye likes. The result was a chair that looked more engineered than designed.
It looked odd, at first—where were the cushions and upholstery?—but not for long. That same year, Paola Antonelli became MoMA’s design curator, and made the Aeron her first acquisition for the permanent collection. In Silicon Valley, especially, it quickly became a status symbol, visually synonymous with the optimism of the dot-com boom. For all its success, Herman Miller’s executives eventually started to think they could improve the chair. Today they say they have, with the newly remastered Aeron. Unveiled this morning at Herman Miller’s flagship store in New York, the new task chair is the culmination of two years of work, and an expression of two decades’ worth of accrued knowledge. “The chair is totally new, from the casters up,” says Chadwick, who worked on the redesign. (Stumpf passed away in 2006.) For the person sitting in the chair, all that newness should translate to a cushier seat. “It performs better,” Chadwick says. “It provides this glove effect.”
To the untrained eye, the new Aeron doesn’t look that all that different from its predecessor. “One of the concerns, originally, was we needed to preserve the iconography of the chair,” Chadwick says. “It has such a strong visual personality that there was reluctance to changing it very much.” The Aeron doesn’t have customers; Not wanting to abandon or confuse them, Herman Miller kept the shape and size of the original Aeron’s back frame. The real difference is in the chair’s mechanics. Consider the tilt function. CEO Brian Walker compares the tilt on a chair to the engine in a car—and an engine from 2016 will undoubtedly boast better performance than one from 1994. The tilt on the original Aeron works via a rubber coil spring that allows the chair to lean back when you do. But Chadwick says that spring comes with a slight lag, causing users to push backwards for a beat or two before the chair responds. The new leaf spring, adapted from the Herman Miller Mirra chair, is made of strips of glass-reinforced polystyrene resin that bend more responsively.
“It always follows you, it’s always in contact with the back,” Chadwick says. The second noteworthy update involves the membranous weave that stretches across the frame. Herman Miller calls it the pellicle, and Stumpf and Chadwick essentially invented it in the early ‘90s. The pellicle, more than anything, defines the Aeron. At the time of its release, most chairs had tufted, upholstered seats. The pellicle blatantly exposed the chair’s function, which was to support the back and regulate body temperature through breathability. Herman Miller says it’s now made 7.5 million pellicles—enough to realize how it could make a newer, more supportive one. The tensile strength of the updated “8Z Pellicle” varies across different zones (the original pellicle had a uniform tension) to create more nuanced posture support. “Just pushing on the lumbar isn’t that healthy of a behavior,” says Tom Niergarth, who led production at the new Aeron. “What you really want to do is get below the lumbar, where you can impact the pelvis.