Aeron chair

The Aeron chair is an office chair manufactured and sold by American furniture company Herman Miller. Introduced in 1994, it was designed by Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf and has received numerous accolades for its industrial design. It is featured in the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. It has been cited as the best-selling individual office chair in the United States with over 8 million sold. Development Development of the Aeron chair began in the late 1970s, after Herman Miller hired designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf. They sought to design a chair that improved upon the shortcomings of La-Z-Boy recliners that were often used in residential and medical settings for the elderly, and completed a prototype called the Sarah Chair in 1988. Herman Miller cancelled the Sarah Chair after deeming it unlikely to be commercially viable, and tasked them with designing an office chair. According to Chadwick, they were tasked by Herman Miller to update the company's previous best-selling office chair, not to design the ideal chair for an eight-hour workday. He said, "We were given a brief and basically told to design the next-generation office chair." They carried over some design concepts from the Sarah Chair, such as a semi-reclining mechanism that simultaneously moved the seat and chairback, to benefit professionals who worked long hours on computers. Early prototypes included foam and upholstery which were abandoned in favor of a fabric mesh called "pellicle" that they found would be more moldable to the user and more breathable, a concept carried over from the Sarah Chair to prevent bedsores. Herman Miller's marketing department was initially apprehensive about selling a chair without upholstery, but the company approved the design. The Aeron chair was introduced in October 1994 and priced at $1,000. It was reportedly named after the Celtic god Aeron, as well as referring to aeration and aeronautics. The suspended "pellicle" mesh seat and backrest are moulded into glass-fiber reinforced plastic frames. The Aeron chair is made out of recycled materials, and 94 percent of the chair itself is recyclable. It was available in three sizes, A (smallest), B and C (largest), and originally included a height-adjustable lumbar support pad. In 2002, an updated ergonomic support system called PostureFit was introduced to improve lower back support. In 2005, the arms switched from a dial to a lever to loosen for height adjustment.