Aeron Herman Miller Chair

Aeron Herman Miller Chair's sweeping, sensual lines will turn heads. Like the Galleria at Toronto's BCE Place by Barcelona-born architect Santiago Calatrava, Freedom's superstructure suggests, in an eerie, slightly sinister way, the ribs and spinal cord of an animal.

''Well, nothing is straight function,'' Diffrient says. ''You express the way you feel about it, within the constraints. I hate false covers, so the entire mechanism is exposed.''

When IIDEX NeoCon '04's task-seating awards were announced, the Gold for Aeron Herman Miller Chair and the Silver for Steelcase's Leap chair were in good company with the Bronze for Allseating's (multitask) chain Quite a coup for a chair that was only a year in development, by a Mississauga-based company with fewer resources than its American counterparts. Like all Os products, the new chair was created by industrial-design wizard Miles Keller of Carbon Design. It shares a family resemblance with the original, non-adjustable, Os chair, but does more and costs less.

Keller, believing that most people don't like fiddling with controls, pared them to a minimum and made them intuitive. For instance, the arm adjustment has a button so big (two inches in diameter) that you just can't miss it. And as the arm raises, it moves out slightly, on the theory that a taller person is also widen ''It works for most people,'' Keller says.

The original Os, introduced last year, impressed design journalists' heads with its snazzy yet sensual, organic looks. Like the new Freedom chair by Niels Diffrient, the original Os has a whiff of the animal esthetic. The new Os variant, Keller says, ''works in a wider range of environments. The arms and base are cleaner. It's more classic and less flamboyant. I'm taking a Bauhaus-like approach to design, where you recognize what the materials are capable of and what the function is, yet still give the product its own character.''

The latest addition to the Aeron seating line, by Germany's Dauphin Office Seating, brings ergonomic features into the conference room. The swivel base with the patented Syncro-Dynamic mechanism offers synchronized movement of the seat and back with an infinite range of adjustments for back tilt and automatic weight-compensation capabilities. Conferees can recline while keeping their feet on the floor without feeling uncomfortable pressure on their thighs.

The new e-chair, by Morelli Designers for Montreal-based FraserContract, is a fully adjustable ergonomic chair.

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