Relaxing Chair

The Eames Office Chair Functionality

When it comes to the office there are few things more important than the quality of seating. It is estimated that at least 80% of the time spent by the average office worker is spent seated at their desk or workstation. This can lead to a number of different problems caused by poor quality seating.

One of the most common complaints is a stiff back, neck pain or even wrist pain associated with stretching due to an incorrect chair height.

The Eames office chair was originally designed to tackle these problems associated with sitting at a desk for long periods of time. It was designed to be comfortable yet also functional at giving the right support in the right areas.

There have been many different types of Eames chairs over the years. The whole range features chairs for use both indoors and outdoors. The most popular is the office chair because of its great looks and functionality.

The Eames office chair is famous for its sleek lines and timeless design. Some designs have been with us for many years yet still look contemporary. It is strange to think that their contemporary design is often generations old!

The Eames chair was originally designed by Charles and Ray Eames. They designed the chair for a private residence for Eero Saarinen and Alex Girard. The designs have now lived on and are infamous for their style and comfort.

The design of the Eames office chair addresses the time office workers spend in their chair. As it can be home to the worker for up to 8 hours of solid seating, it has been designed to be incredibly comfortable. It is so comfortable due to its unique design that relieves pressure. The Eames chair is also designed to offer additional support to the lower back. This also helps to stop poor posture with the positive side effect of eliminating back pain and neck strain.

The Eames chair doesn't just look great, it also is highly functional. The difference about an Eames office chair and a typical generic office chair is that it has been designed with the user in mind first, rather than being designed to a budget.

The Eames office chair has a large number of different options available. These variations include the soft pad chair, the mesh chair and the ribbed chair. Each chair is different. Each variant also has its own niche. There are also two height options on most Eames office chairs. There are the high backed options and the standard chairs.

The high back options offer more back support and are ideal for those who spend especially long periods of time sitting at a desk. They are also ideal for those who sometimes need to sit back or recline while thinking or viewing and so on. For smaller offices, the low back chair is ideal. They are also better suited for office workers who are consistently getting up out of their seat or moving around.

The Eames chair has been around for generations. The design, levels of comfort and high quality of styling has seen it grow a bigger and bigger audience. This is likely to continue long in to the future. With the number of people working in an office drastically increasing every year it is likely that quality seating will become more and more important. The Eames office chair aims to solve these problems.

The Eames Office Chair: A Seat for All Seasons

Charles and Ray Eames remain amongst the greatest designers of the modern era. Across architecture, film and furniture they produced iconic designs that combined sleek aesthetics, major technical achievements and, above all else, comfort. Many designers have since taken their iconic work as inspiration, spinning all sorts of stylish, innovative and comfortable chairs. Amongst the Eameses' most famous designs was the Aluminium Group, commonly known these days as Eames office chairs.

The design was born out of a challenge set almost sixty years ago. The noted architects Eero Saarinen and Alexander Girard were designing the home of industrialist J. Irwin Miller: a house which has since been declared a National Historic Landmark. The house was to be the epitome of modern design and its interior uncluttered, but homely. Girard was a long time collaborator of the Eameses and asked them to design high-quality seating that could be used both inside and outside the house.

Charles and Ray Eames’ chair was to be a revolution. The seat frame was made from cast aluminium, making it light enough to be moved in and out fo the house easily, whilst also being strong enough to resist the inevitable bumps and knocks. The frame was designed to support a stretched synthetic mesh. The material was secure, but fitted loosely enough that it could conform to the body of anyone sitting in it. This mesh was not a standard cover for the seat, but an integral, load bearing part of the chair’s design. This form of seat suspension was a major technical breakthrough, throwing out the rulebook that had existed since the Ancient Greeks which said chairs should be a solid shell.

The potential of this Eames chair was quickly realised. The Miller House was completed in 1957 and in 1958 the chair was released to the mass market as the Aluminium Group and has been on sale ever since. There have been some notable changes over the years. Nowadays the chairs are used almost exclusively indoors and have become associated with corporate environments such as offices, boardrooms and the like: hence the unofficial title “the Eames Office Chair”. To accommodate this change of environment, the original synthetic mesh was removed. It was designed for outdoor use and its removal allowed a wider variety of fabrics and upholstery to be fitted. New fittings have included different, more modern forms of mesh, fabric upholstery and, perhaps most famously, black padded leather.

Nowadays, the Eames’s legacy lives on in a range of chairs inspired by the Eames office chair. These new designs borrow many of the chair’s key features while continuing the process of innovation that the original designers so valued. In describing his design philosophy, Charles Eames used the parable of a banana leaf; used as a simple dish in southern India, the banana leaf was gradually made more and more ornate, until some finally returned to just using the simple leaf.

"I'm not prepared to say that the banana leaf that one eats off of is the same as the other eats off of, but it's that process that has happened within the man that changes the banana leaf"

This philosophy of returning to and recognising the elegance of simplicity can be seen in the designs the Eames have inspired.