Form and function in balance: the Steelcase Karman office chair

Essential design. I’ve found myself writing this phrase a lot lately. It can be applied to many new products put out by furniture brands who are aware of their role in preserving the environment’s resources, and of the changing, more mindful market. It has become in itself an aesthetic direction that acknowledges the need for restraint. It is performance with no excess, technology that’s invisible; functionality with economy of form. Today, if we are putting more stuff out there, it needs to justify its existence more than ever. 

Take the office chair. It’s been designed and redesigned, had knobs put on, not to mention levers. It’s been made to look technical, it’s been made to look like an armchair. In effect, excessive detail and over-complicated adjustment systems have often made the seat’s ultimate performance unattainable for the majority of users. So what’s next for the task chair in this age of restraint? 

Steelcase, a thought leader in the world of work, is among those who have revisited the design of the workplace chair many times over the years. They have the popular models Gesture – named by Wirecutter as ‘Best Office Chair’, SILQ, and Think. But they are currently introducing the new design Steelcase Karman to the market. They have thought long and hard about the whys and wherefores.

‘Karman is the amalgam of all our learning and legacy – there’s DNA of every single one of our chairs built into it. It’s the evolution of everything we know about seating and the way people work,’ says Mark Spoelhof, Steelcase’s Design Director, Global Seating. With the development codename ‘Minima’, Steelcase Karman resulted from the design team’s commitment to delivering a chair that wrapped up all their accumulated intelligence about the ergonomics of sitting at a desk, with the latest technological advancements, in the least amount of materials possible. ‘I'm not asking one component to do one thing, I’m asking it to do three things,’ says Spoelhof. ‘We're pushing materiality, shape and geometry as far as we can push it. Why that’s great for sustainability is that we’re trying to use far less material to create the same affordances, so if I can create one chair for the same embodied energy as two traditional chairs, that’s a pretty good ratio.’

One of the most significant changes Steelcase wanted to bring to the genre was to make user-operated adjustments redundant, since more often than not they are ignored anyway to the detriment of the sitter. ‘The best interface is no interface required,’ says Jessie Storey, Steelcase Design Director. ‘We thought about a chair that could fit into the evolving context of work and that can in part off-load the burden of adjustment from the user onto the chair itself.’ The ambition was that the new task chair intuitively fit different people, different postures and different tasks, without the need for the user to fiddle with settings.

In effect the exercise in paring back while increasing comfort and adaptability brought them to a (patented) hybrid seat which combines a totally new, high-performing textile with integrated cushioning. It works in the weight-activation mechanism of SILQ and the streamlined back profile of Gesture. The textile is suspended from a lightweight frame that flexes so that it allows no pressure points to compromise comfort and health. Whichever way you sit on Steelcase Karman, you are always in contact with the seat; it follows the contours of your body, supports your posture, flexing as you move, which makes it perfectly adaptive to different body shapes and sizes and also types of work.

An entirely new mesh fabric which is exclusive to Steelcase, Intermix, is key to the design. Regular mesh fabrics are light and breathable, but not always so durable. Intermix, the result of long hours of experimentation, was made using a unique weaving process blending yarns and filaments. In combination with the flexible frame, it creates support that neither sags nor jars. While embellishment does not have a part to play in essential design, there is flexibility in the weave to allow for differing textures and expressions, and the introduction of colour, so that other contemporary design itches are scratched – the need for tactility, warmth and self-expression.

The multi-functionality of its components has made it one of the lightest of all mesh task chairs – at just 13kg. It’s made from recycled and recyclable materials and designed for disassembly. Steelcase Karman demonstrates what the future looks like for task chairs. It’s essential design; all performance and no excess.   

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