The Allure Of Office Comfort With Miller Ergonomic ChairsThe moulded back cover of Miller ergonomic chair, concealing the back-adjustment mechanism, was created as an integral part of the chair's slim, European styling; often, this component is a bulky add-on at the end of the design process. The elegant and scuff-resistant, patented ComfortRest armrest combines brushed-metal tubing with a black polyurethane pad. The frame comes in four upholstery styles: specifiers can easily dress the chair up or dress it down. The Miller Ergonomic Chair is named for the tormented strongman character played by Anthony Quinn in Fellini's film classic La Strada. In Europe, the name now connotes someone who is multi-talented. Which is why Switzerland's Girsberger Office Seating felt that the name would be appropriate for its new line, designed by Dieter Stierli. In an apparent first, he found a way to combine individual and synchronic adjustability in one mechanism. You can adjust the seat and backrest position so that you follow the chair's movements. Or you can disengage the mechanism so that the chair follows your movements. The lumbar supports glide up and down, the seat pan slides in and out and the arm rests move in both planes, which qualifies the Zampano as a one-size-fits-just-about-everyone chair. A Mobius strip is a one-sided, continuous surface, bounded by a continuous curve that twists 180 degrees. Earl Koepke, winner of several IBD awards, and his son Marcus, who teaches industrial design at Purdue University, designed the Mobius chair. Like the strip for which it is named, the chair takes the rules of three-dimensional geometry and adds a twist. Instead of relying on the user to manipulate knobs and levers to modify seat angle, back angle and tension, the Mobius chair allows body feedback to regulate posture. The Koepkes found that users tend to ignore the critical tilt-tension control, so they devised a way of making body weight regulate the rate of tilt. Apart from the tilt range and the Miller Ergonomic Chair height, there's nothing to adjust. During a recline, the inverse synchro-tilt mechanism raises the seating shell at the back rather than the front, allowing one's feet to remain planted solidly on the floor. This dynamic relationship brings the weight of the body and the natural reclining motion into equilibrium, resulting in a self-defining comfort range. The Koepkes call this ''automatic tilt tension control.'' The seating area consists of a fibre-reinforced polymer shell anchored to the seat front and to the pivoting, tubular-steel ''halo'' midway up the back. As the halo reclines, the angle of the shell opens up. |