The designers at forpeople on how they developed the Keyn Chair Group.
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Keyn’s patented CradleFlex movement responds as you shift your position.
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Achieve a range of looks by combining bases, shell and frame finishes, and an extensive choice of materials.
Product Story
The Keyn Chair Group is a range of meeting and side chairs that offers responsive movement and immediate comfort for collaborative spaces. The design, by the London firm forpeople, uses four key parts to create every model in the group, so each retains the same visual appeal. For extra comfort, Keyn’s CradleFlex movement responds to shifts in posture, reclining up to 10 degrees.
A Sitting Solution
Without a comfortable chair, especially in meetings, people lose attention, become fatigued and disengage. To address this problem, we worked with forpeople, a London-based design firm, to create the Keyn Chair Group. The design took shape based on analysing people’s movements when sitting for extended periods of time in meeting and collaborative spaces.
Responsive Movement
Keyn’s patented CradleFlex movement responds as you shift your position. It effortlessly reclines up to 10 degrees whilst simultaneously allowing the seat to move forward. Each of the Keyn Chair Group variants has the same CradleFlex movement. It supports your changes in posture, so you remain comfortable and therefore focused.
Immediate Comfort
When you sit upright, Keyn provides immediate comfort through its sculpted back, which is always in contact with your spine. In addition, the moulded seat back in the seat-pad version meets rigorous cleaning protocols. It features a tough yet flexible polymer material that makes it particularly relevant for high-traffic areas such as cafés.
Universally Elegant
A key consideration of forpeople’s design approach was to ensure that each variation of the chair has the same visual appeal. To achieve this, they created a design based on four key parts: the base, the cradle, the seat shell and a choice of fabric or leather upholstery options. The chair’s detailed pattern not only contributes to its lightweight aesthetic but also provides ventilation to help you stay cool.
One Chair, Many Personalities
Keyn chairs are versatile in appearance. Achieve a range of looks by combining bases, shell and frame finishes, and an extensive choice of materials. The latter range from the light bright café feel of the Fresh Accents palette through to sophisticated leather and polished options for executive environments. A reverse contrast option brings a burst of accent colour to a more restrained palette.
Group
By changing the base, finish and upholstery, the Keyn Chair Group can be tailored for use in a café, meeting room, workshop space or boardroom. Whatever the model, every chair retains the same immediate comfort and responsive movement. The almost limitless number of combinations ensures Keyn complements our existing seating, from Studio 7.5’s Mirra 2 Chair through to Stumpf and Chadwick’s iconic Aeron Chair.
Herman Miller and forpeople see things much the same way: both companies are driven by a continuous search for new perspectives and insights, brought to life through great design, cutting-edge engineering and responsible manufacturing. So when we asked forpeople to work with us to design a new group of meeting chairs, we knew they would fit right into the team.
The idea that a chair needed to move was decided early in the design process. Observations of meetings showed that people continuously shift in their seats, leaning forward or stretching back, typically up to 53 times an hour. People expect movement in their task chair, so it made perfect sense that a meeting chair should support and respond to those movements too.
The answer to supporting seated movement came in the form of CradleFlex. It responds to the sitter, effortlessly reclining up to 10 degrees whilst simultaneously allowing the seat to move forward. By supporting changes in posture, Keyn helps people remain comfortable and therefore focused, which is good for their bodies and their minds.
Product Story
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Design
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