A balance of health and harmony in your workspace reduces aches and pains, increases your mental well-being, aids productivity, and can even increase creativity. Sit up straight and take notice of these six ways to a healthier new year.
There is nothing like a product that goes above and beyond. High style, high comfort, high performance — they’re the items that stay with us through thick and thin. Here are six such picks that top our list.
Ergonomics. It is such a dry term. But every single day, regardless of the work we do, we put our body through a whole series of tasks that bring us into contact with tools. Tools that may or may not help our body perform those tasks in a healthy way. I love the idea of sitting down and writing for hours on end – maybe because I’ve got two kids and nothing ever happens for hours on end anymore! Interruptions are embedded into my work day. But even for shorter stretches I’m finding a good chair is an absolute must. Once you’ve got that right, then the desk comes into play. How do I get that surface to work for me as beautifully as my chair?
It’s fascinating to follow our designers as they make that same journey – from chair to desk. The late Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber were working on the Embody chair when they stumbled on another problem – how we interact with our computers, those screens that we are glued to for so much of our day. Instead of thinking just about the chair the designers took in the whole work universe – chair, work surface and surrounds. They started to consider the desk and chair as a single system. The idea was to create a synergy between the chair and desk that would accomodate all of the ways we like to sit and work. And would do it ergonomically. Ah, that magic word again. Their radical solution was the Envelop desk. A clever design that moves with you as you shift position through out the day.
Today would have been Bill Stumpf’s 75th birthday. Bill, along with Don Chadwick, brought us the revolutionary Aeron chair.
Stumpf also had a hand in the Embody chair, the Envelop desk and the Ethospace office system.
“I work best when I’m pushed to the edge. When I’m at the point where my pride is subdued, where I’m an innocent again. Herman Miller knows how to push me that way, mainly because the company still believes—years after D.J. De Pree first told me—that good design isn’t just good business, it’s a moral obligation. Now that’s pressure.”
Above: Stumpf with Ray Eames.
Stumpf also credits his ground breaking designs for Herman Miller with time studying and teaching at the University of Wisconsin’s Environmental Design Center ”Everything goes back to those days at the University of Wisconsin,” he said. It was at the Center that he had the chance to work with specialists in orthopedic and vascular medicine. He conducted extensive research into not just the ways people sit—and the ways they should sit. ”Everything was about freeing up the body, designing away constraints.”
Bill Stumpf died in 2006 and it was a great loss to the design community. He believed that “Art and design give us the skills to survive–both physically and spiritually.” We still miss him. Below is Stumpf talking about how he designs a chair.