The office chair, known variously in the industry as a "task chair" or "work chair", is something we often take for granted. Yet the market for this ubiquitous product is worth £2bn in the US alone, where it is served by more than 100 companies, all making sure the mechanical pads we perch on are as high tech as the digital ones we type on. Seriously minded ergonomists have been on the case, improving and repivoting the office chair with each generation since the 60s. As a result, what we are equipped with today looks more like fitness equipment than furniture, and comes with control panels, levers, instruction manuals and special advisors as standard.
Office chairs are distinguished from other seating by their kinetic mechanisms and adjustable features. While evolutionists would have us believe that Charles Darwin first invented the concept by putting castors on his study chair so that he could get to his specimens faster, according to Jonathan Olivares, author of an upcoming tome on the subject, A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, to be published by Phaidon Press next spring, this was a movement that was already highly sprung and in full tilt by Darwin's time.
In fact, he says, this now heavily industrialised object originated in America in the mid-1800s, when the American westward railroad expansion created an unprecedented number of clerical and management positions and an urgent need for office seating that would promote productivity by discouraging clerks from leaving their desks.
While the fetishistic approach to ergonomics didn't kick off for another hundred years, swivel and roll movement was always a part of the equation. According to Olivares, the office chair as we know it originated from the porch-bound rocking chair on which most Americans were used to conducting their business at the time.
"The earliest designs were the result of 19th-century mechanical ingenuity and were patented in the 1840s and 50s in New England and New York," he says. "The inventors of these models were working at a time when Americans were used to the comfort and motion of the rocking chair and their designs clearly draw on this archetype."
Born from the industrial revolution, task chairs didn't change very much until the dawn of the computer heralded the office revolution. The 50s and 60s were the last time you could expect to find an office chair that looked lovely.
"Since the early 90s, office chairs have looked like exercise machines," agrees Olivares. "If you want an elegant chair, that doesn't look as if it's meant for a workout, you have to predate the 70s. The Eames Aluminum group or the Pollock chair are gorgeous designs, but you may develop back problems working in them."
When industrial designer Niels Diffrient co-published his design sourcebook Humanscale in 1974 (including X-rays of people sitting in rigid office chairs in the 50s), he introduced the concept of ergonomics — work furniture that would account for the needs of the human frame. It was revolutionary. "Ergonomics was to the 70s what sustainability is to our time," says Olivares.
From then on, the science of sitting has dictated the market, with fads — lumbar support being a key one — coming and going, and the changing face of computers making small adjustments to our default position. Today there are really only two types of office chair, according to Olivares, the sinking synchronised recline and the teeter-totter.
"The former evolved through the 1980s before finding its ultimate expression in the 1994 Aeron chair, and allows a seated person to recline and sink backwards from the ankles. The latter uses the forces applied to the backrest to hoist the seat forwards and upwards, opening the angle between the torso and legs. This was introduced by the 1991 Picto chair, but has since evolved through several other designs."
Much like automotive design, the shape of office seating is determined by a small, elite group of specialists. Recently, however, others have argued the case for a new approach. As the workplace changes dramatically to allow more flexible and informal environments in which workers are no longer so shackled to their workstations, designs such as Konstantin Grcic's quirky 360° chair for Magis, and Officeline's Lei chair (Monica Förster's design specifically engineered to suit women's physiology) are suggesting we might see some considerable new shifts in the market in the near future. Sitting pretty and sitting comfortably are not mutually exclusive — sitting there comfortably, prettily and still actually physically doing something is the Holy Grail.
Read A short history of the office chair: a timeline
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