Commentary

FuturArc hunts down the dream office chair, making sense of the many options that promise comfort and productivity. Through the maze of marketing campaigns and hyped-up promises, we discover seven frontrunners that every savvy employee and manager should know about.

Aristotle contended in his treatise on the chair that it can only be understood by example and within context. He might well have used the word ergonomics—had it been known then—since ergonomics is at heart about matching user with context. It would take mankind roughly another 20 centuries to get around to this concept, using it to craft the ideal seat at work.

The office chair can be traced back to the mid 19^th century. As the size of businesses grew in new industrial economies, it paved the way for furniture alternatives, all with one goal: boost productivity. The modern office chair was born, with a fitted wooden seat to support the body, armrests and slanted back for comfort. Mounted on casters—allegedly a novel idea from the English naturalist Charles Darwin—this chair could also swivel, which guaranteed employees mobility around their desks to perform a wider variety of tasks more efficiently, while remaining seated for longer periods of time.

In the post-war boom years, new and improved versions of chairs surfaced every decade. It was not until the 1970s that ergonomics—the science of enhancing everyday objects from the viewpoint of the user, such that the interaction is safer and more efficient—came to play a key role in its design. The rapid transformation of jobs and office environments intensified the demand for more intricate chair designs. The market was quickly saturated with models for every use and every budget. Today, the office chair—commonly labelled as task chair—and its counterpart, the executive chair, are leaders of the pack. And what a pack it is: a staggering fusion of forms, functions, materials and styles for everyone from industrial workers to medical personnel. Boasting adjustable heights, seats, backs, armrests, sometimes even head and footrests, they all meant to counter stress injury and back strain, often induced from sitting for long periods. Ergonomics has transformed the way we work and what we expect of our workplace.

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Maxime Flores is a copywriter and designer with years of experience in graphic design and corporate identity. He started his career writing for the arts and the media in Montreal, Canada—from which he hails—shifting to design along the way. He moved to Singapore some 15 years ago where he joined a multinational branding house as creative director. Breaking away from the bustle of corporate life, he is now a free agent, devoted to what he loves best: travelling, designing books and identities, and catching up every now and then with his first love, writing.

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