Herman Miller has an extensive catalog of ergonomic chairs; some more well known than others. We will be focusing on Herman Miller chairs designed for office use. The five most well known Herman Miller Office chairs; are the Aeron, Embody, Mirra, Celle and Equa. Although they are all designed to be ergonomically sound they each were meant to resolve a specific set of work environment issues. Herman Miller chairs are known for their comfort, high quality, durability, ergonomic design, and aesthetics
The Aeron Chair
The Aeron chair is by far the most famous of Herman Miller chair designs. The designers of the Aeron set out to redefine the work chair around four ideas. An ergonomic work chair should safeguard you health, offer functional support, should be inclusive of most body types, sizes and weights, and environmentally sound. The final Aeron chair design was so revolutionary that it was added to the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection in 1995 and has won numerous design awards. The Aeron chair is most well known as an ergonomic desk chair. But, it is actually a family of ergonomic office chairs that also includes a work stool and a guest chair. Read more about the Aeron Chair.
The Embody Chair
The Embody chair has been embraced by many as the Herman Miller chair meant to replace the Aeron chair. But, the reality is that although both chairs are ergonomically sound they each were designed as solutions to different problems. The embody chair is the next evolution of the Aeron. However, where the Aeron was meant to solve functional and ergonomic problems seen in everyday work chairs from a health neutral perspective, the Embody chair aims to be health – positive.
The designers of the Embody chair saw one over-riding problems with ergonomic chairs and how they were designed. They were designed to be health neutral and not health positive. What this means is that previous ergonomic chair designs focus on posture and function but they did not focus on pressure distribution as a focus of design. The design goal of the Embody chair was to create a chair that achieved postural equilibrium. Postural equilibrium is the point where your eyes are vertically aligned with your hips. Once postural equilibrium was achieved, dynamic surface pressure was designed into the Embody chair to achieve a more therapeutic chair and health-positive chair rather than a health neutral chair. Read more about the Embody chair.
The Mirra Chair
Mirra chair was designed to react to the sitter like a second skin. Its design was meant to make sitting more comfortable with very few chair adjustments required for each sitter. Of all of the Herman Miller office chairs it is meant to be a generalist. It is designed to fit both male and female body types to the 95th percentile. Herman Miller calls this passive adjustability. One of this ergonomic chairs biggest focus is in reducing back injury. It leverages passive PostureFit technology to keep your lower back aligned. This helps reduce lower back injury, due to long periods of sitting, by keeping the lower back relaxed. Read more about the Mirra chair.
The celle Chair
The Celle chair was designed to be the most comfortable chair in its price range. It leverages ergonomic technology developed for the Mirra and the Aeron chairs. It leverages an integrated Posture fit contour and pressure distribution to make the design ergonomically sound as well as comfortable. It leverages cellular suspension in the back rest to distribute pressure and heat making it a very comfortable chair for extended use.
The Equa Chair
Herman Miller’s Equa chair was designed as an ergonomically sound task chair for the general workforce. The Equa was first manufactured in 1983. So, the ergonomic research and technology behind the chairs design is pretty dated. It is an ergonomically sound design but is simple and uses affordable technologies to make it useable throughout the office. It is meant to reduc pressure on the lumbar region of the back associated with being seated doing repetitive tasks. This Herman Miller chair is definitely on the lower end of the price spectrum. It is designed with the same ergonomic and usability principles as other Herman Miller chairs but is truly meant for the general office worker.
A Few Last Words On Herman Miller Chairs
In general Herman Miller chairs are designed to address issues found in the workplace and at particular price points for office chairs. From this perspective Herman Miller has designed a family of chairs that address health, comfort, and environmental issues while keeping in mind the individual worker that will be using the chair. Price points play a huge role in what technologies are available in what chairs.
Conceptually, we can see this by comparing the Embody chair to the Equa 2 chair. Now obviously these two ergonomic office chairs are very different and they are meant for completely different price points. But, this drives home the point, The Embody chair sells for an estimated $1600.00 where the Equa chair sells for as little as $135.00. This is a huge difference in pricing. But, the reality is that each of these Herman Miller chairs will be used for decidedly different purposes and workers in different positions.
But, despite the differences in pricing each of these Herman Miller chairs are ergonomically sound and accomplish their general design goals of helping make workers more comfortable, productive and healthier.
