As anyone who's worked in an office would know, Herman Miller's Aeron is the chair to have at your desk for both comfort and status. As a guy who's worked at his share of Silicon Valley startups the net boom and bust, I've only had the privilege of stealing Aerons from coworkers when they weren't looking; never actually being actually senior enough to sit on one full time. Things are different now, my fellow prisoners, with Herman Miller's latest creation, the Embody. Its $1600 body was designed by Bill Stumpf, who was also responsible for—among other projects—its famous predecessor, the Aeron. It's no surprise that the Embody feels very good. First a quick rundown on design. The Embody is made from non-toxic and sustainable materials (42% recycled content), which makes the entire thing 95% recyclable. It's an extremely beautiful chair when viewed as a whole, but if you zoom in to look at each individual edge, joint and connector, it gets even more amazing. Check out the gallery above to see what we mean.
The are seven different knobs, buttons and levers you use to adjust your sitting position to fit your body. or The seat is also made up of four layers. ...the bottom is a series of plastic bands providing suspension, the second is a sheet of coils for support, the third is a system hexagonal rings that shift with your weight and the final layer is a mesh that allows air circulation to keep the sitter cool. The most important part, though, is the backrest. Herman Miller claims that "a matrix of pixels creates dynamic seat-and-back surfaces that automatically conform to your every movement and distribute your weight evenly." They claim that this will reduce stress, help circulation, lower your heart rate, improve your posture and pretty much make you a better worker. It's hard to say conclusively, or scientifically without a doctor actually hooking up electrodes and taking blood samples before and after using the seat. But it is the most comfortable chair we've ever sat in.
You can adjust the amount of recline, the tension of the recline, your seat depth, your back curvature, your armrest positioning and how high the seat is. But you can do this on many other chairs. What makes this one special—and more comfortable—is that the backrest has individual supports. Think of a Simmons mattresses with individual coils; this adjusts and supports whatever contortions you're putting your spine through in your daily routine of reading Gizmodo. The Embody is also really, really heavy. Granted, my muscles have long atrophied to the point of uselessness, but this has got to be one of the most heavy chairs I've ever lifted up a flight of stairs. It's also very sturdy. You never feel like you're going to break the chair, no matter how far back you lean. And, if you turn the tension up high enough, you'll never accidentally feel that horrible falling sensation you get from reclining back too fast. Extremely embarrassing during meetings. The only question left is whether or not you should spend $1,600 of your own money on this.
Unless you're like us and you work at home in front of your computer for 12+ hours a day, probably not. But if you can convince your boss to buy this for you, DO IT. Tell him you'll get more work done because you'll actually not hate sitting at your desk. But you know the real reason why you want it: because you don't want to be a hunchback by the time you're 50. [Thought Pile via Herman Miller] Notes: The Steelcase Think and Humanscale Freedom have been worthy competitors to Herman Miller chairs in the past, so they might be very good comparison chairs for you to try out before deciding which one to purchase for your office. The Embody is newer, of course, so it might have taken the best of both chair designs and incorporated it here.Most of us spend hours each day sitting in our office chairs, either working or playing in front of a computer. We've discussed how important it is to spend your money where you spend your time, so we asked you which office chairs were the best of breed, both for price and for health-saving, comfort-packing features.
You responded, we took at look at the five best office chairs, and put them to an all out vote. Now we're back to highlight the winner. The iconic Herman Miller Aeron chair took the top spot and brought home close to 42% of the overall vote. Its high retail price didn't deter many of you from praising its incredible comfort and customization options, and since it's been in circulation for so long, many of you also noted that Aeron chairs are out there are rock bottom prices from discount office supply stores, closing offices, or from people looking to sell their used ones. Hot on the Aeron's heels in second place is the affordable-but-comfy IKEA Markus, which brought in close to 28% of the votes cast. In third place was Herman Miller's next generation ergonomic office chair, the Herman Miller Embody, with close to 14% of the vote. In fourth with close to 10% was the Steelcase Leap, and bringing up the rear in fifth was the Raynor Ergohuman with just under 7% of the vote.The Hive Five is based on reader nominations.
As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? !Photo by Zach Copley.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. We’re trying to tilt the pelvis forward, so the spinal column creates this healthy curve.” The new pellicle pushes more on the lower back, and has more give around the shoulder blades, where desk workers often carry more tension.