Aeron chair

The Aeron chair

The Aeron chair is a product of Herman Miller designed in 1994 by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. It is an ergonomic chair that is regarded by many users as inherently very comfortable due to its wide range of fit (available in three sizes) and adjustability. Its novel design has gained it a spot in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection.^[1] The chair's exclusivity became a symbol of the dot-com bubble in the late 1990s, and by 2010 the Aeron chair has become so prevalent that a large number of independent refurbishers and resellers specializing in the Aeron ^[2] that are not affiliated with Herman Miller.

The chair departs from a typical upholstery-over-cushioning-base design. Instead, the seat and back are made of a stretched, semi-transparent, and flexible mesh called Pellicle. It can be customized through modular extensions like lumbar support, sacral support (dubbed PostureFit), fixed or adjustable armrests and varied bases to accommodate diverse fields of deployment.

Bill Stumpf came up with the name Aeron which was derived from the word aeration which describes one of the comfort aspects of the mesh suspension.

The Aeron includes a 12-year warranty backed by Herman Miller. Since the Aeron has now been on the market for more than 12 years, many businesses have begun offering repair services ^[3] to complement the factory warranty. The 12-year factory warranty provides repairs through both the manufacturer and authorized resellers and according to the terms set forth by Herman Miller is non-transferable from the original owner.

In April 2010, Business Week published an article which cast doubt on the ergonomic benefits of the Aeron chair.^[4] The article includes comments from Don Chadwick, who says he wasn't hired to design the ideal product for an eight-hour-workday; he was hired to update Herman Miller's previous best-seller. "We were given a brief and basically told to design the next-generation office chair," he says. Never the less, the popularity of the Aeron chair and the notion of its ergonomic support has continued to thrive.

Awards

• Aeron Chair named one of "Designs Greatest Hits" in Your Company magazine.
• "Designs of the Decade" Gold Winner in "Office Furniture" from the Industrial Designers Society of America & BusinessWeek for Aeron chair.
• International Plastics Consumer Product Design Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers for Aeron chair.
• The Aeron work stool won the 2006 Attendees' Choice Award from the National Ergonomics Conference and Exposition.

See also

Design portal

• List of chairs
• Fashion

References

1. ^ "Aeron Chair in the MoMA Collection". http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A7392&page_number=1&template_id=1&sort_order=1. Retrieved 2009-02-10. 
2. ^ "Aeron Chair Product Page". http://www.beverlyhillschairs.com/chairs/herman-miller-aeron-chairs. Retrieved 2011-11-21. 
3. ^ "Herman Miller Aeron Repair Services". http://www.beverlyhillschairs.com. Retrieved 2011-11-21. 
4. ^ "Your Office Chair is Killing You". http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/10_19/b4177071221162.htm. Retrieved 2010-05-03. 

External links

• Herman Miller Aeron Product Page