Steelcase: Human-centred seating design

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the human race should have mastered the design of the chair by now – we’ve been making them for millennia, after all. Yet still we keep trying to perfect our perches. Considered to be one of the harder typologies for a designer to crack, the chair is quintessentially an object that serves people; saving their legs and backs, easing their tasks. It is also a significant feature of our environment so needs to please the eye. The human experience is central to good design – but what if lifestyles change, tastes shift and our understanding of the human body evolves? Design must move, too.

Bettering chair design is, in fact, a constant area of research. It involves the tracking of our movements as we pursue everyday tasks, and investigations into how chair mechanics impact us both anatomically and mentally. Add to this ongoing efforts to make ever more intelligent materials to aid comfort and good posture, and finding ways to wrap up all this performance in an attractive package that guarantees minimal impact on the environment.

Few are as deeply engaged in this process as Steelcase, the thought leader in the world of work with a production facility at Sarrebourg in Eastern France. Steelcase knows it is imperative that chairs serve us adequately, or the toll of office life on our health becomes too great. It knows because it takes the biomechanics of sitting extremely seriously and has ploughed four years into motion studies that have engaged 27 scientists at four different universities and led to multiple discoveries.  

The result is a series of innovations, initiated and orchestrated by Steelcase’s in-house design team and integrated into its portfolio of task chairs. They include the all-important LiveBack technology, which came from understanding that comfort is more than just an initial feeling when you first sit down but something that needs to be dynamic, following your movements, keeping you engaged and focused while supporting and encouraging healthy posture throughout the day.

‘We use shape, material and geometry to put motion into the chair shell,’ says Mark Spoelhof, Design Director, Global Seating, Steelcase. ‘We design for compliance, which allows the chair to respond to the body sitting in it.’ 

Closely mimicking the natural movement of the spine, LiveBack is used in all Steelcase high-performance task chair designs, from Think to Steelcase Series™ 1, Gesture to Steelcase Karman. It responds specifically to research carried out during the development of Please that revealed how the spine does not move as a single unit, with the lower part arching forward when the top leans back, alongside the discovery that every person has a ‘spine print’, as unique as a fingerprint, that governs how we move. It became clear that the upper and lower parts of the back require different kinds of support. Teamed with dynamic arm design, LiveBack keeps you connected with ease to your chair, to the people around you, and to your workstation and technology, and it does this, often intuitively, whatever size or shape you are. 

As research further refines ergonomics, advances materials and reduces the manufacturing footprint, the Steelcase task chair evolves. The latest model, Steelcase Karman, assimilates some of the best features of past models, and adds its own remarkable feature: a new high-performing textile, Intermix, alongside integrated cushioning. It also pushes the sustainability factor, building on the advances made by the Think chair model, reducing materials and mechanisms to a weight of just 13kg, while all parts are made from recyclable materials and can be disassembled at end of life.

While the quest for perch perfection is ongoing, Steelcase’s earlier models remain in the portfolio to provide choice – to meet different stylistic tastes, different budgets, and even different notions of responsible design – the award-winning design Gesture, for example, is built to last – the ultimate gesture, some say, of sustainable design. Steelcase Karman and Think, meanwhile reduce their environmental toll by minimising materials and paying attention to their afterlife. 

On average we spend half our days seated – in front of a screen, in meetings, at the dinner table, by the TV or reading a book. Far from being all about new-fangled interfaces, sometimes the biggest design challenges today are simply about upgrading everyday experiences, like sitting, in a bid to keep us happy and healthy.

© Architonic

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