It is only become a recent practice to care about the posture and ergonomics while designing a chair since most of the office chair users spend hours and hours sitting on and the careless designs often cause a lot of medical issues related to the spinal cord. However, Michigan based industrial designer and Vice President of Global Design and Engineering, James Ludwig, has been concerned about office chair design for far too long.
Ludwig spent 10 years of his life to design an office chair that would intuitively adjust itself according to the posture of the user, taking inspiration from the plant tendrils instead of complex machinery. The 30-parts office chair, SILQ chair has been the final product of this conquest and Ludwig has most certainly achieved what he desired to do.
SILQ is made up of carbon fibers which has become famous around the globe for its high flexibility, high strength and very low weight. However, since carbon fibers are very expensive, SILQ is naturally priced pretty steep hence, the production of SILQ will now be based on a patented polymer that behaves similarly as carbon fiber but is a fraction of its cost. SILQ is priced at $970 now but its intuitive adjusting feature certainly makes the price worth it!
Images: © Steelcase
h/t: Curbed