share
Facebook
Twitter
Google +
Myspace
FeedWallinside
The Right Seating For The Office
The quality of chairs in the office are much more important than many people would think. It is estimated that at least 80% of the time spent by the average office worker is spent seated at their desk or workstation. This can lead to a variety of different problems associated with poor quality seating and posture if the seating is not of adequate standard.
One of the most common complaints is a stiff back, neck pain or even wrist pain associated with stretching due to an incorrect chair height.
In order to address these problems, the Eames office chair was created. It was designed to be comfortable yet also functional at giving the right support in the right areas.
The Eames chair has been seen in various forms over the years. The whole range features chairs for use both indoors and outdoors. The Eames office chair has climbed to the top thanks to its clever design and beautiful look.
The Eames office chair is famous for its sleek lines and timeless design. Some designs are years old, yet still look brand new! It is strange to think that their contemporary design is often generations old!
The Eames chair came from the minds of Charles and Ray Eames. They designed the chair for a private residence for Eero Saarinen and Alex Girard. The designs have now lived on and are infamous for their style and comfort.
The design of the Eames office chair addresses the time office workers spend in their chair. As it can be home to the worker for up to 8 hours of solid seating, it has been designed to be incredibly comfortable. It is so comfortable due to its unique design that relieves pressure. The Eames chair is also designed to offer additional support to the lower back. This also helps to stop poor posture with the positive side effect of eliminating back pain and neck strain.
The Eames chair doesn't just look great, it also is highly functional. The difference about an Eames office chair and a typical generic office chair is that it has been designed with the user in mind first, rather than being designed to a budget.
There are lots of Eames office chair options. These variations include the soft pad chair, the mesh chair and the ribbed chair. Each chair is different. Each variant also has its own niche. There are also two height options on most Eames office chairs. There are the high backed options and the standard chairs.
The chair with the high back option is more supportive. They are also ideal for those who sometimes need to sit back or recline while thinking or viewing and so on. For smaller offices, the low back chair is ideal. They are also better suited for office workers who are consistently getting up out of their seat or moving around.
The Eames chair has been with us now for many, many years. The design, levels of comfort and high quality of styling has seen it grow a bigger and bigger audience. This is likely to continue long in to the future. With the number of people working in an office drastically increasing every year it is likely that quality seating will become more and more important. The Eames office chair will help to satisfy this area.
The Origins of the Eames Office Chair
The Eames office chair has its roots in Columbia, Indiana in the 1950s. The Miller House is now a National Historic Landmark, but in the mid-1950s it was a building site. The house was to be the epitome of modern design and its interior uncluttered, but homely. Girard was a long time collaborator of the Eameses and asked them to design high-quality seating that could be used both inside and outside the house.
The chair they delivered was groundbreaking. They constructed the seat frame from cast aluminium, making it lightweight but strong. The Eames chair could be moved about with ease and wouldn’t be easily damaged. The frame was designed to support a stretched synthetic mesh. The material was secure, but fitted loosely enough that it could conform to the body of anyone sitting in it. This mesh was not a standard cover for the seat, but an integral, load bearing part of the chair’s design. This form of seat suspension was a major technical breakthrough, throwing out the rulebook that had existed since the Ancient Greeks which said chairs should be a solid shell.
The potential of this Eames chair was quickly realised. The Miller House was completed in 1957 and in 1958 the chair was released to the mass market as the Aluminium Group and has been on sale ever since. There have been some notable changes over the years. Nowadays the chairs are used almost exclusively indoors and have become associated with corporate environments such as offices, boardrooms and the like: hence the unofficial title “the Eames Office Chair”. To accommodate this change of environment, the original synthetic mesh was removed. It was designed for outdoor use and its removal allowed a wider variety of fabrics and upholstery to be fitted. New fittings have included different, more modern forms of mesh, fabric upholstery and, perhaps most famously, black padded leather.
Nowadays, the Eames’s legacy lives on in a range of chairs inspired by the Eames office chair.These new designs borrow many of the chair’s key features while continuing the process of innovation that the original designers so valued. In describing his design philosophy, Charles Eames used the parable of a banana leaf; used as a simple dish in southern India, the banana leaf was gradually made more and more ornate, until some finally returned to just using the simple leaf.
"I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf"
This philosophy of returning to and recognising the elegance of simplicity can be seen in the designs the Eames have inspired.
The Chair You Don’t Realise You Love
You’ve seen an Eames Lounge Chair. Even if you think you haven’t, trust me, you have. OK, OK, I’m no mind reader, but the Eames Lounge Chair is an icon of modern American design. First launched in 1956 as the Eames Lounge (670) and Ottoman (671) (the latter being the footstool that accompanies it), the chair’s co-designer Charles Eames described it as being "comfortable and un-designy". It’s that discrete, familiar comfort that made this most famous Eames chair (for Charles and his wife Ray designed many) an icon of the Modern movement and as ubiquitous a piece of unshowy but stylish design as a Vettriano painting.
It’s also why anyone who has ever watched an American TV series or film has seen one. Even if you don’t think you have. Joey and Chandler had one in their apartment in “Friends”. Donald Draper and Dr Gregory House both have them in their offices. Doctor Who took a doze in one back in the Sixties. It’s hard to describe the piece without pictures, but I’ll try. The Eames chair is almost a bucket seat in design. Its back, arms and seat are joined together by aluminium supports. The whole thing leans slightly backwards on its swivel base, pulling the sitter back into its mitt-like shape. The raising of the sitter's legs makes the accompanying footstool (it's that Ottoman again) near essential and the whole thing almost ridiculously comfortable.
There's a reason the Eames chair has made so many appearances on film and television. You can't seperate the reasons for the Eames Lounge Chair's versatility and its many appearances in popular culture. It was unveiled in 1956, on the “Home” show, NBC’s hugely popular daytime magazine programme fronted by actress and game show panellist Arlene Francis. A huge advertising campaign followed immediately. The campaign focused on the chair's versatility, showing it in a whole host of unlikely locations. It’s that same versatility which explains its continuous place in popular culture - and, in particular, the American popular imagination. The Eames Lounge Chair is comfortable yet smart, stylish yet understated. That’s why it can sit as easily in Frasier’s luxurious Seattle apartment as it can in Iron Man’s cluttered workshop.
The Eames Lounge Chair has been in continuous production ever since. In America, Herman Miller have continued to turn out units since its premier in 1956, while Vitra have continued to produce it for the American market. It has also inspired replicas, imitations and knock offs of varying quality - particularly in the European market, where “originals” are far more expensive. Some of these are dire to say the least. Spray painted cushions, exposed screws and poor quality materials are amongst the complaints that have come from those who bought cheap, fast buck knock offs. On the other hand, some replica Eames chairs have been hailed as even better than the originals, offering increased versatility and the option to customise the colours of your purchase to fit your tastes and the design of your home or office.
The Eames Lounge Chair has long been an icon of usability and style. You’ve seen it so many times that you don’t even realise it. Now you’ve come to understand why it’s so popular, maybe it’s time you started paying it a bit more attention.