Chairs
Created | Updated Jun 6, 2003
Chairs : The evolution of 20th century seating
Graham Creaton BA(Hons.) Applied Arts
University of Derby, UK.
Fig. 1 'Polyprop’, 1962-63, Robin Day from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p.387 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
Introduction
Like many objects a chair is identified not by its form but rather the primary function to which it is put, i.e. something to sit upon. It is this simplicity of primary function that makes designing a desirable chair difficult. Designing an object that can be sat upon is easy, so what then differentiates a good chair from a bad one? The following chapters examine how the way this problem has been addressed in the twentieth century has changed, and how the analysis of yesterdays' solutions can enhance the design of seating in the future.
‘apart from possibly the automobile the chair is the most designed, studied, written about and celebrated artefact of the modern era.’
Chairs are very important objects. The functions they fulfil, the philosophy behind their making, and the reasons they are bought, comprise a vast and varied area. In the twentieth Century the design of chairs has been, variously, an exercise in Product design, Interior design, Art, Craft and Architecture. Chapter 1 examines how chair design has become this significant and complex area. Chapter 2 proposes a way of regarding chairs with a view to identifying the thinking behind their design. Chapter 3 relates the development of the design of seating to the parallel developments in the science of ergonomics and the ethos of mass production. The design of seating in a commercial and transport context is investigated in chapter 4. In acknowledging chair design as a continuous progression the conclusion ‘The Future’ seeks to extrapolate the trends of the twentieth century and isolate the technology and thinking that will influence the design of chairs in the next century.
1 - The Aesthetics, Style, and Status of Chairs
‘every truly original idea - every innovation in design, every new application in materials, every technical innovation for furniture - seems to find its most important expression in a chair’
In our everyday lives it is likely that we will spend more time in a sitting position than in any other and, although we fill our homes with a myriad of domestic objects, we will almost certainly spend as much money on the seating as on any other aspect. This importance is reflected in the greater variety of chairs available than for any other type of object designed for the home.
In addition to their practical importance we also use chairs to express our individuality and status, and demonstrate our good taste. Architects, artists and designers have also been driven to express their higher ideals through chairs and, throughout the twentieth century, the avant-garde of seating design has been an important aspect of many artistic and cultural movements. The most important design movement of the twentieth century has been, of course, the modern movement, and many of the figures central to this movement designed chairs. During this period the tendency was for the design of complete environments rather than the separation of say architecture, interior, and product design. The link between architecture and chair design was particularly close. The most prominent modernist architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier all designed chairs, either specifically for the interiors of their buildings, or as an independent part of their practice: as ‘architecture writ small’ . For many it was a low cost, achievable way of seeing their ideas given a physical form .
fig. 2 A design for an interior of a ‘House for an Art Lover’, 1901, Charles Rennie Mackintosh from Art Nouveau by Klaus-Jürgen Sembach, p.180 (Cologne: Taschen, 1996)
At the start of the twentieth century, in Britain, the most prominent Architect-Designer was Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Like others working in the Art Nouveau style he designed, or at least supervised the design of, complete environments; from the structure of the building to the tiniest interior fitting. Many of Mackintosh’s chairs are still available, produced by the Italian company Cassina. Cassina have negotiated access to Mackintosh’s archive at the Glasgow School of Art, so their reproductions are quite authentic in terms of form and finish. The availability of these, and other, reproductions exposes some interesting paradoxes relating to the status of these chairs. Although Mackintosh, and other widely copied designers such as Marcel Breuer and Le Corbusier, designed chairs as integral components of their interiors, the reproductions are sold individually and are bought as discrete works.
fig. 3 Chair for the Willow Tea Rooms, 1904, Charles Rennie Mackintosh from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p.106 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
Mackintosh’s Chair for the Willow Tea Rooms (fig. 3) was originally designed to function not only a chair but also a screen, visually dividing the Tea Rooms, and as storage. The Cassina reproduction, wrenched from this environment, is sold as reproduction of a work of art, primarily, and only incidentally as a chair. This situation is confirmed when original chairs come up for sale at auction and fetch prices many times that of the ‘new’ reproductions. It is not as if the reproductions are not of as high quality as the originals, Mackintosh did not make the chairs himself, nor were they made by highly skilled craftsmen, or using precision machinery; at best the construction is simple, but could be described as crude.
Such is the energy and creativity that has been applied to seating design in the twentieth century that it would be easy, at this point, to acknowledge only the new, the exciting, and the adventurous, and ignore that with which most of us fill our homes. In addition to the active aspirations we have for ourselves, our life-styles and, consequently, the things with which we surround ourselves, we are also looking for comfort. Just as in a physical sense we will see that comfort consists of an absence of pressure and muscular activity so, psychologically, comfort may be induced by an absence of anything new or challenging. What design remains is an ethos that simply marries the economies of mass production with the familiarity of a bland historicism. A visit to almost any out of town retail development will reveal warehouses full of this stuff and yet none of it is illustrated in this dissertation. This type of furniture does have much to recommend it, it is cheap, easily available, and widely liked, and, as Peter Dormer states, 'Generalized old-fashionedness is popular.' However, it has little to say with respect to how furniture will be designed in the future, which is the focus of this work, beyond “There will be more of the same”.
In the next chapter twentieth century chairs will be considered in terms of the functions they fulfil but this process exposes a profound difficulty in treating the entirety of twentieth century chair design as a single subject. It exposes bodies of work that, although they are presented as chairs, and can certainly be sat upon, are not actually functioning, principally, as chairs.
fig. 4 ‘Hotel Ukraina chair’, 1985, Siegfried Michail Syniuga from ‘The New Furniture: Trends and Traditions’ by Peter Dormer, fig. 184 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987)
The use of narrative imagery in this piece, and others of Syniuga’s, makes its functions easy to determine. It is functioning principally as political satire. The fact that this satire takes the form of a chair is, if not incidental, then contrived in order to be absurd. This being the case it would be senseless to talk about the ergonomics of such a chair for example. It is a piece of art in the form of a chair. There exist many examples of this, and the borderline between these and ‘proper chairs’ is indistinct. Between these extremes are chairs that are self-referential and communicate the designers' ideas about chairs.
fig. 5 ‘The Venturi Collection’ 1984, Robert Venturi for Knoll, from ‘The New Furniture: Trends and Traditions’ by Peter Dormer, fig. 48 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1987)
The objects in this collection by Venturi are, unequivocally, chairs, but also have much to say about what we expect chairs to be. We can, therefore, see the whole spectrum from the ‘Art furniture’ makers such as Siegfried Syniuga through the self conscious work of Robert Venturi, to the commercial, functionalist designers such as Robin Day (fig. 1).
As the borderline between ‘Art chairs’ and ‘Designed chairs’ is indistinct, so the boundary between Artists and Designers, in this area, is also indefinable. Artists, in the twentieth century, have often used everyday forms and artefacts to convey their vision, whether it be the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp or the voids of Rachael Whiteread. The chair, as one of the most important modern domestic artefacts, is regularly used in this way. This is not an example of ‘Artists doing design’ or ‘Designers doing art’ but of Artists using the loaded significance of chairs to convey their Art. This is not a universal view, Peter Dormer states that
‘...a lot of designers find little or no congruence between their taste and that of other people. Some of them become artists.’
suggesting that the Artists working with furniture are, in effect, failed designers. This I think is unduly cynical.
This idea of ‘Design as Art’ suggests an Art / Design interface that does not involve that which is usually regarded as the middle ground; Craft. Of course there are chairs that do represent a very high level of ‘Craft’ but because of the long and distinguished history of craftsmanship associated with chairs in past centuries, designers in the twentieth century have shied away from this way of making. Modernism eschewed the handmade look and pursued an industrial aesthetic. Designers working more recently have usually either not found traditional techniques helpful in the materials or visual styles they use, or found that to use these techniques would price them out of their market.
Because there is such a huge variety of chairs available it is difficult to recognise a particular model and assign a value to it, nor does the cost of chairs depend on the specification, as with, for example, televisions. The value of chairs then rests on more elusive attributes, authenticity, design, quality or exclusivity for example. How the chair is marketed and, in particular, where the chair is bought has a big impact on its perceived value.
For domestic items chairs are expensive, and yet everyone must have them. This makes for a hugely price competitive domestic market and many people buy the cheapest chairs they can find, that fulfil the functions they require of them. This means that these ‘cheap’ chairs are produced in huge quantities and are therefore perceived as the norm. Any chairs made that differ from this ‘norm’ are, of necessity, produced in smaller quantities , and are therefore always more expensive. We have then a major clue to a chair's value, if it does not look ‘normal’ then it must have a higher value. This ‘unusualness’ may take the form of an unconventional form or unusual materials, a different construction method or more sophisticated functions.
‘To be able to make an informed assessment of a chair, to make sense of what its image means, it is important to know what a chair costs to make, what price it is being sold for, and how many have been produced.’
2 - The Functions of Chairs
As stated in the introduction, the definition of a chair is not descriptive or aesthetic but functional, simply: ‘an object to be sat upon’. As seating design progresses beyond the primal ‘piece of wood of a convenient height’ chairs can be seen as objects that fulfil not only this primal function, but also a range of others.
The functions of chairs can be divided into three categories, those concerned with the physical well-being of the sitter; those concerned with their psychological well-being; and those functions which concern people other than the sitter. Of these three categories the first is self explanatory. The second is concerned with how sitting in a chair makes you feel, or how what it does to your position, posture and relationship to others, makes you feel. The third category is to do with the fulfilment of functions for other people, the designer, the owner of the building in which the chair is situated, or someone whose job it is to clean it, or the floor around it, for example.
The group of functions that are concerned with the physical well-being of the sitter has been closely examined and formalised in the twentieth century forming, as it does, an important part of the science of ergonomics. This is examined in depth in the next chapter.
How sitting in a chair makes you feel is determined by a very complex culturally sensitive process. In order for us, as social animals, to feel good, we need to feel in control and one of the ways in which we do this is to impose our will on our environment, with our own bodies as the centre of that environment. Our clothes are the first layer and what we wear is hugely significant, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. Forming the next layer out, so to speak, are chairs. Next comes the furniture and decoration in our rooms, our homes themselves then the areas in which we live. The outer layers consist of our villages, towns or cities, as
applicable, then our regions, countries and continents. Our choice of chairs then is very close and therefore very important. For us to be happy with them they have to look as though they will ‘do the job’.
The separation of the concept of ‘comfort’ into the physical interaction between the chair and the body - ergonomics, and the effect of the visual appearance, is well established . The concept of effectiveness can, similarly, be divided into the ergonomic efficiency in terms of tasking, and how effective a chair ‘looks’. If a chair looks uncomfortable or unsupportive then the user will not be completely satisfied with it, no matter what the objective, ergonomic, reality.
If we want to relax then the chair has to look comfortable, if we want to work then the chair we choose should look efficient. The design cues we look for may come from other chairs we have had experience of in the past, or they may be drawn from other sources, for example Roy Fleetwood’s Wing chair (fig. 6) with its aeronautical and engineering references, for example.
fig. 6 Wing, 1988, Roy Fleetwood from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p.584 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
The posture that a chair puts us in is also very important to our state of mind. The more alert we want to be, the higher off the ground we want our chairs. If we want to relax then we find a lower chair more appropriate. This issue is currently having an interesting effect in the automotive industry. In cars we want to feel efficient, powerful, and in control, yet the seats we are given are very low and raked backwards, albeit for good ergonomic and aerodynamic reasons. This may make us feel vulnerable and subservient to other road users. The solution? We demand large, high four wheel drive type vehicles with the seat height we want.
In public situations most chairs are fixed and this prevents us from adjusting the position of the chair in relation to other people. Prevented from doing it ourselves, seating in this situation needs to be designed in such a way as to demarcate our personal spaces for us. Arms are used on bench type seating in public environments in a way that would be ridiculous on our sofas at home. Public multi-person seating is also very much more sturdy, not just for durability, but also to prevent any movement of our seat when someone else sits down further along. If our seat did move this would, subconsciously, feel like an infringement of our personal space, and we would feel begin to feel uncomfortable.
Chairs are also designed to fulfil functions for people other than the sitter. In a commercial situation the chairs are unlikely to have been bought by the person who is to sit on them, how then can the chairs they buy fulfil functions for them? Primarily of course they are buying a solution to the problem: “Where will people sit?”, but this is only the first of the problems chairs in this situation can solve. Chairs are commonly used to indicate the status of the sitter, saying “I am important” or “I am efficient” for example, and this can be extended to convey information about a company, perhaps “We work in a high-tech way”. Once it is accepted that chairs function in this visual way then there are new ways in which they can fail. Durability is important in both commercial and domestic situations, but in commercial situations the seating may have to appear perfect in order to perform its visual functions. Durability is, therefore, at a premium, along with low maintenance and ease of cleaning.
There are functions which chairs may be required to perform, even when they are not in use. For the manufacturer the ability to flat-pack furniture until it reaches the point of sale, or even the consumers home, saves considerable expense in distribution costs. The slim profit margins of companies like IKEA depend on this saving. For the user, especially the business user, stacking and ease of storage may be a critical characteristic.
In addition to the functions already considered, chairs are also used by the designers as a way of communicating their ideas to a wider audience . The two groups who have extensively used chairs in this way, in the twentieth century, are artists and architects. Occasionally an entire philosophy is distilled into a design for a chair. Rietveld's Red Blue chair epitomising the De Stijl movement for example.
fig. 7 The Schröder house interior including a Red Blue chair, 1987 from Malbert, Roger (cur.) (1990) Rietveld Furniture and the Schröder House, The South Bank Centre, London p.8
3 - Ergonomics and Mass Production
Since the early years of the twentieth century two new factors have influenced the design of chairs and seating; ergonomics and mass production.
Ergonomics is the science of human efficiency and it has great relevance to seating design. It is the chair which largely determines the posture we adopt whist sitting, and it is this posture which will determine how comfortable we are and how efficiently we can work. The application of ergonomics to a new design can be used to ensure that the chair will be suitable for the vast majority of people who may use it, that it will be comfortable, and that the intended type of work to be done will be possible for the sitter.
fig. 8 'Sitzmaschine', 1908, Josef Hoffman from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p.129 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
Hoffman's 'Sitzmaschine' is an early example of a chair designed using ergonomic principles. Its name ‘Sitting machine’ is the essence of an ergonomic chair and its geometrical design, particularly the adjustable back rest, exposes the designer’s ergonomic intentions. Although in fig, 8 it does not look very comfortable, it was originally sold with seat and back cushions. It thereby efficiently addresses the two primary functions of a chair, those of support and comfort. Because the size, shape and preferred posture of people varies, ergonomic design often leads to adjustability, as in this case.
The raw material of ergonomics is anthropometric data. This is information about the physical properties of the human body regarded as an articulated structure. It includes aspects such as masses, volumes and dynamic properties and, particularly relevant to seating design, dimensions.
Dimension in mm
Dimension Sex 5th 50th 95th
Sitting height M 842 906 967
F 786 850 907
Eye height M 726 786 844
F 675 733 785
Thigh clearance M 114 144 177
F 106 137 175
Elbow rest height M 190 243 294
F 181 233 281
Knee height M 493 543 593
F 452 498 545
Buttock-Knee length M 540 594 642
F 518 569 625
Elbow to elbow breadth M 350 417 506
F 315 384 491
Hip breadth M 308 354 406
F 312 364 437
fig. 9 Anthropometric dimensions of the seated figure Sanders E., and McCormick M. (1993) Human Factors in Engineering and Design, McGraw-Hill, New York, p.417-18
The above table details basic dimensions of a sitting figure. It is based on a large representative sample of adult Americans taken in 1989. The figures at the top of the three dimension columns refer to percentiles, this is a statistical technique where the figures for each measurement are arranged in size order, the 1st percentile being the smallest and the 100th the largest. The three points recorded here are the 5th, almost the smallest; the 50th, the average; and the 95th, almost the largest. The most useful way to use anthropometric data is to design to suit the section of the population that falls between the 5th female percentile and the 95th male percentile, this will ensure that 95% of the population can be accommodated. Attempting to design to suit everyone from the 1st to the 100th percentile would result in gargantuan chairs and doorways 3m tall and is generally regarded as being unachievable.
The ergonomics of relaxing.
In order for the whole body to be relaxed, the muscles within the body must be as relaxed as possible. The muscles are used in a seated position to maintain a stable, comfortable posture, and this function can be taken over to a large extent by a well designed, supportive chair. Even in an ‘easy’ chair, in which the sitter needs do nothing but relax, this support, in the form of firm padding or sprung upholstery, needs to be present for the sitter to be comfortable. This principle was not fully understood when the use of foam replaced traditional horsehair and springs in upholstery in the 1950s. It was thought that the softer and thicker the cushioning then the more comfortable the chair
fig. 10, 'Sacco', 1968, Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini & Franco Teodoro from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p. 471 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
This thinking lead to a series of more and more formless ‘seating solutions’ in the 50s and 60s, culminating in the Sacco in 1968 (fig.10). According to the thinking of the time, it should have been supremely comfortable with its ultra-soft form and ability to mould its shape around the sitter. Unfortunately, whilst it was soft, the support was not there, the sitter had to use their muscles to maintain a stable posture. Sitting in one became an effort. In addition to its physical inadequacies the Sacco also made the sitter psychologically uncomfortable by imposing an unusual, ‘low status’ posture and making it difficult, and undignified, to get up. As Peter Dormer states in The New Furniture - Trends and Traditions:
‘...the Sacco was physically uncomfortable and most people felt ill at ease looking and feeling as though they were stranded in a large and wilful doughnut. Sacco, the metaphor for laissez-faire democracy, was defeated by its inability to encourage wellbeing.’
The use of thick, soft padding to provide comfort was a result of designing intuitively and exaggerating one ‘comfort-providing’ element at the expense of others. Often a degree of comfort may be sacrificed for aesthetic reasons, or in order that the chair may fulfil other functions, but the consideration of ergonomics enables the designer to acknowledge, quantify and limit this compromise. A chair that is not at all comfortable fails in one of its primary functions and in effect fails to be a chair, whatever it looks like.
The ergonomics of working.
Since the early sixties, legislation has required that employers provide seating suited in design, construction, and dimension for each employee, bearing in mind the task the employee is required to do.
There are two primary functions of a chair in a work situation. Firstly it must enable the sitter to maintain a stable and effective posture while he or she works, and secondly it should allow the sitter to relax those muscles which are not required for the job in hand, and avoid any discomfort, so as not to tire the sitter unduly. Should a seat fail to fulfil either of these criteria then the result will be discomfort, and potentially injury for the employee, and inefficiency for the employer.
Just as with chairs designed for relaxing, it should be acknowledged that any effective design for a ‘work chair’ will be a compromise in many respects. In particular, the function of support is, to some extent, at odds with that of comfort. For a chair to be comfortable for any length of time it must incorporate some form of cushioning or flexibility, however the softer this is then the less the support available and the more the muscles of the back have to be used to maintain the posture. Therefore in a very soft seat the padding distributes any pressure but the sitter is required to use his or her muscles to maintain a stable posture, which is tiring. If a chair is hard then it may provide sufficient support to allow the muscles to relax, but the hardness causes pressure points, which are painful. In situations where the stability of the sitter is of extreme importance then the amount of cushioning is minimal.
The individually custom made seats of racing cars, for example, are fitted around the driver to provide maximum support and stabilisation with a level of comfort barely sufficient to prevent pain during the race. Normally the form of a chair cannot be fitted so closely to the shape of the body. As well as having to suit different shapes of occupant, it must also allow the sitter to change position repeatedly in order to be comfortable over any period of time. As Corlett states:
'Its design and functioning will be influenced by the tasks to be done, the other equipment to be used, the environment, and, of course, the individual human differences. It will be evident that there is unlikely to be one seat suitable for all jobs and the concept of the 'ergonomic chair' independent of the task is not possible.'
fig. 11 'Aeron', 1992, Donald Chadwick & William Stumpf from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p. 625 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
'Aeron' (fig.11) is an example of a high specification, high tech. office chair. Although it is carefully styled no aspects of its appearance are purely decorative, but are derived from its structure, mechanism, or innovative materials. That is not to say that its design is solely a product of the analysis of its functions. After all the functional considerations are addressed the designer is still left with choices, and it is these choices that largely determine the appearance of the chair. If this were not true then there would, perhaps, be only three or four models of chairs on the market. The idea that ‘Where function x is required under conditions c then necessarily form y.’ , the strictest interpretation of the ‘Form follows Function’ dictum is now widely discounted .
The influence of mass production.
The mass production of chairs is not a twentieth century development, Michael Thonet was the first to make use of production line methods to produce his range of bentwood chairs. The ‘No. 14’ , a dining chair with a cane seat, sold a total of 40 million units between its first production in 1851 and 1914. This was the start of a powerful trend and throughout the twentieth century the making of chairs has been steadily changing from a tradition based craft production, to a machine based manufacturing process. This change has substantially affected the construction methods and materials used, and the forms favoured. The use of machines for the making of chairs, or components for them, has introduced a new functional aesthetic. It has not, however, produced forms that are necessarily any closer to a functional ‘ideal’. If a chair is designed to be mass produced then it is likely to use easily available materials, standard gauge steel tubing for example, and standard components, castors, fixings, fabric and the like. The use of these elements mitigates against the resolution of pure function and the resulting aesthetic may be ‘high-tech’ without being functionally elegant or truly ergonomic. This degree of standardisation, or modularity, is almost inevitable. The machines used to make the chairs are themselves designed to handle only materials with certain predictable characteristics. Designing new manufacturing machines to make a single model of chair is almost never justified.
fig. 12 ‘Calea’, 1996, Prospero Rasulo from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p. 678 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
‘Calea’, (fig. 12) designed by Prospero Rasulo is an example of a chair designed for high volume production. Although its spare design is elegant and unconventional, the materials from which it is made, and the way in which it is put together, is typical of mass production, indeed it shares the tubular steel legs and injection moulded plastic seat of the archetypal mass produced chair, Robin Day’s ‘Polyprop’ (fig. 1).
fig. 13 'Orfilia', 1989, Jorge Pensi from 1000 Chairs by C. & P. Fiell, p. 619 (Cologne: Taschen, 1997)
The ‘Orfilia’ chair, (fig.13) has not been designed for high volume production. Its seat and back is of lacquered, moulded plywood and the frame is of cast Aluminium. Both these materials require manufacturing processes that are labour intensive and expensive. Not choosing to accommodate the vagaries of the mass production has, however, enabled the designer to integrate aspects of the function of the chair into the aesthetic. The stresses in the legs of both chairs vary throughout their length, this suggests that more material should be present where the stresses are highest and less in the areas under less stress. Only the more flexible nature of the low volume production methods for the ‘Orfilia’ has allowed the designer to accommodate this functional characteristic as a visible aesthetic, by thickening the legs at the areas of high stress.
Although, as stated above, the general trend has been for an increased degree of standardisation and modularity in chair design, there have been some technological innovations recently which may spell the end of the mass production of vast numbers of identical chairs. As in most fields of design, the use of computers in all stages of seating design and manufacture is becoming more commonplace, and the systems routinely used are becoming more sophisticated. Specifically the integration of CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Manufacture) is leading to the use of much more versatile semiautomated manufacturing machinery that can produce different components with only a rapid change to the computer generated instructions, rather than an expensive period of retooling. In the industry currently this is leading to the production of modular ranges of chairs, in office seating in particular , or a range of styles based on the same internal frame, common in the domestic market. In the future, as a proportion of the total production costs, design costs will drop, as a result of CAD, as will retooling costs, as a result of CAM. This will enable a greater range of specialised chairs to be produced any one company.
4 - Commercial & Transport Seating
‘As the century has progressed, there has been an increasingly sharp division between two main categories, the domestic and the working chair. The former has been seen as part of the decorative tradition; the latter has become more and more mechanically orientated, a tool used to convey status in the working environment and often deliberately designed to be blandly technocratic in its imagery.’
The market for commercial, contract seating is different in many ways from that of domestic chairs. For one thing the buyers of this furniture, the directors or office managers, are largely not buying chairs that they themselves will use, so their priorities are different. Rather than looking for comfort and support they may be looking for a range of seating that will convey a corporate identity or is technologically advanced. They will also be conscious of the office hierarchy. Paradoxically this often means that the workers that need the higher specification chairs, people who are at their desks all day doing repetitive tasks, W. P, operators for example, end up with the lower specification chairs, whilst those with more varied work patterns, the managers, get the top of the range models.
In some ways the commercial market is more open to imaginative design. It is much more likely that the seating will be bought to communicate a message to the users. ‘this is a high quality establishment’ or ‘this is a very efficient business’ for example. This will result in the purchase of high quality, high specification, chairs.
The development of the design of work seating throughout the twentieth century has been radical, having followed the rapid development of the science of ergonomics. This can most clearly be seen in fixed seats designed for a specific task . Transport seating, whether for the passengers or the 'driver', provides interesting examples.
When seats were first designed for ‘drivers’, in cars, trains, planes, etc., they were the same shape as other 'tasking' chairs in general use. It was acknowledged that the alertness of the sitter was important and the seating was therefore designed in an 'anti-relaxing' way, it was simple upright and uncomfortable.
fig. 14 De Dion Model K, 1909, from Motoring for the Millions by Ian Ward, p.15 (Poole: Blandford Press, 1981)
As cars, planes and trains became more numerous and sophisticated, more consideration was given to the needs and desires of the seated occupants. The simple fact that the vehicles were not stationary meant that the seating was required to absorb vibrations and prevent the occupant from sliding out whilst the vehicle was cornering. As the vehicles became more efficient and reliable so longer journeys became more common and seating was designed to be comfortable and supportive for longer periods of time.
fig. 15 Interior of the new classless carriage on the central London railway, 1900. From Designed for London: 150 Years of Transport Design by Oliver Green and Jeremy Rewse-Davies, p. 51, (London: Laurence King, 1995)
fig. 16 Carriage interior, 1938. From Designed for London: 150 Years of Transport Design by Oliver Green and Jeremy Rewse-Davies, p.61, (London: Laurence King, 1995)
fig. 17 Carriage interior, mid. 1990s From Designed for London: 150 Years of Transport Design by Oliver Green and Jeremy Rewse-Davies, p.69, (London: Laurence King, 1995)
Superficially the above illustrations seem to show that the dimensions, design and geometry of the tube train seating have changed very little since 1900. This is, in part, due to the fact that the design was good in the first instance, however, as the wider functions that these chairs could fulfil became more understood, then the specification for new train interiors became more complex.
In its initial incarnation (fig.15) the seating barely fulfils the basic support and comfort requirements of all chairs. It is evident from the use of punched metal that comfort was not a high priority for the designer in 1900, but that this has subsequently been addressed in the later schemes. In addition to these basic functions, the 1900 design is also compact; cost effective; durable; easy to clean and repair; and easy to get in and out of .
As the carriage interiors were redesigned repeatedly throughout the twentieth century more and more functions were addressed until, in the latest version,(fig.17), the seating also promotes a corporate identity; demarcates personal spaces within the carriage; aids safe movement around the space; induces a feeling of security in the sitter; allows emergency egress from the carriage; and provides a bright, upbeat environment.
Including the functions of comfort and support that makes a total of 13 separate functions which seating in this environment is designed to fulfil. This analysis of function in the widest sense has the potential to form the heart of the design process for all chairs, this theme will be examined further in the conclusion, ‘The Future’.
The Future
Chairs have a very long history with much tradition and many design conventions both in the minds of the designers, and in those of the sitting public. I believe, however that there has been a slow, but fundamental shift in the way in which designers approach the process of designing of a new chair.
It has long been the case that designers have considered two things: The basic function of the proposed chair, and the conventions and traditions normally associated with the design of that sort of chair. These then serve as a specification from which the chair is designed. A chair resulting from this process is successful in that it adequately serves the purpose for which it is intended, and the sitter perceives, from visual cues, that it is an appropriate chair for their use.
The tradition based design process has been so successful, for so long, because using the traditions and conventions associated with chair design automatically incorporates some of the wider functions that would be identified if the specification was more analytic. The function of conferring status on the sitter, by the use of expensive materials and labour intensive workmanship, is an obvious example.
When a situation arises which demands that a chair fulfil a completely new requirement, however, then the designer is forced to incorporate into the specification, a list of wider functions. For example when a seat was designed for the driver of the first London motor-buses introduced in 1899, in addition to supporting and ensuring the comfort of the driver, it also had to absorb the vibrations and stabilise him on cornering whilst allowing him to freely operate the controls. Thus the addressing of this longer list of functional requirements meant that less notice was taken of tradition. Gradually it has been realised that all sorts of things can be considered ‘functions’ of a chair and that consideration of these alone are sufficient to design a chair.
Within the sphere of transport seating design this change is exemplified in the design process of the classic 1950’s Routemaster bus. Speaking of the pre-design specification process, Bill Durrant, London Transport’s Chief Mechanical Engineer said:
‘We asked the Operating Managers to try to erase from their minds all past features they had specified, to think out their requirements from rock bottom... the aim being to get down to the ideal bus from their point of view’.
Thus the alternative to a ‘basic function plus tradition’ specification is an analytic one, consisting of a list of requirements that the final design solution is required to address. The physical requirements, with regard to the sitter, can be closely analysed and tested using ergonomics. A keener understanding of the wider functions can suggest materials, finish or style. The designer’s role then becomes like that of a chef, skilfully combining a range of ingredients. The creativity in this process comes from addressing a thoroughly analysed specification in a fresh and original way and producing an end result that works. A result that works for the designer, works for the manufacturer, the distributor, the retailer and, most importantly, for the user.
With regard to this pragmatic design of functional chairs there are several emerging, or developing, technologies which will be important in chair design in the future. Ergonomics, relying, as it does, on the analysis of large amounts of anthropometric data is a science ideally suited to ‘computerisation’. Until now the expense of adequate processing power to generate and manipulate three dimensional images has been a limiting factor. However, the technology is now available that can generate raw anthropometric data to produce forms and specifications, evaluate designs and pass these designs directly to manufacturing machinery. As this technology becomes more widely used and affordable, smaller companies and even individual designers will be able to design, and make, in this way. The impact of the computer on the process of making objects may eventually parallel the revolution in printing that occurred with the introduction of desk-top publishing.
The process described above may indicate that production technology will enable many designers to have their designs produced, and therefore make a living from chair design. Unfortunately there is a counter-current. As design and production technology have improved, so have international relations, and transport. With increasing commercial links within Europe; between the USA and Central and South America; and between the far east and the west, some companies are seeking a multinational and even global market for their chairs. This is especially significant in the lucrative office chair market. Thus the work of a small team of designers may in the future sell tens of millions of units. Which are bought in preference to the work of smaller, more local producers at the expense of design jobs.
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