The History of the Task Chair
The simple task chair has evolved to become an essential element in a workspace. As businesses re-framed their spaces based on changing work environments and new design tools, the office chair was created to accommodate employees who shifted from long hours of field work to long hours spent in the office. Today you can’t spot a desk or table without some of these chairs nearby. But there’s plenty of early history behind its development that has dramatically shaped our work lives over the centuries.
Origins of The Chair
Jenny Pynt—author of A History of Seating, 3000 BC to 2000 AD with Joy Higgs—notes that around 3000 B.C., some of the earliest depictions of seating had hints of task-appropriate changes which enabled workers to perform more effectively. Evidence of a three-legged stool with a concave seat appears to have been designed to make hammering easier.
The earliest account for an executive office chair can be traced back to the Roman Empire, during the reign of Julius Caesar. He would not only conduct official business while sitting on a curule chair but also took it everywhere he went, to give him a greater sense of authority to his people.
Design Innovations
It wasn’t until the 1800’s, when train travel became more popular, that the office chair took on more utilitarian purposes. Train cars were outfitted with Centripetal Spring Armchairs, which were designed by Thomas E. Warren, which offered more comfort and support than before. In the years leading up to the Industrial Revolution, businesses were more conscious about chairs that allowed workers to fulfill their duties longer in certain work environments.
According to Jonathan Olivares, an enthusiast who has studied office chairs per his book, A Taxonomy of Office Chairs, the Centripetal Armchair had almost every feature most modern office chairs have today, with the exception of adjustable lumbar support.
International reaction to this new type of chair was negative at first. Pynt explains in her paper, “Nineteenth Century Patent Seating” in the Journal of Design History, that people would deem these chairs so comfortable that it was immoral and promoted laziness. This proved to not be the case, as worker productivity actually declined and illness increased in the 1920s.
In the following years, companies like Tan-Sad would react to this phenomena by developing a swiveling chair with a curved, adjustable backrest. Other companies would market their chairs to be able to prevent health problems such as hemorrhoids and constipation.
Intro to Ergonomic Design
We wouldn’t see a more conscious design effort until the 1970’s, when more people were recognizing that sitting in an office all day was unhealthy for them. With Ergonomic Design, manufacturers and designers began to research and test their products based on the study of the human form and how to fit elements to better suit our bodies’ needs.
Research has shown that sitting down for long periods of time does terrible things for your body. In the early 1980’s, Haworth was one company that introduced new modes of work environments for their clients and when office seating was added to Haworth’s product offering built at their facility in Michigan, the company continued its movement toward providing complete workspace solutions.
Other companies at the time adapted ergonomic design and created office chairs that were often too expensive for the general employee to use and rather became a status symbol for most senior executives and/or successful companies.
After a few major economic incidents (the dot-com bubble and the Great Recession of 2008 for example), consumerism peaked an all-time low, and office chairs were sought to be more economically and environmentally accessible. Starting around 2010, manufacturers began producing cheaper chairs that need fewer parts, which resulted in a reduced carbon footprint.
