Fauteuil de malade, eighteenth century
The modern collapsible wheelchair was the work of a pair of British mechanical engineers, Herbert Everest and Harry Jennings. Everest had broken his back in a mining accident, and he needed a wheelchair that could be folded and put in the trunk of a car. In 1933, he and his friend Jennings built a chair that used lightweight tubular steel, a canvas seat and back, and an X-frame that allowed the chair to fold flat like a director’s chair. Everest and Jennings formed a company, and their collapsible design became the international standard.
If you go into any hospital today you will find folding wheelchairs that are essentially unchanged since the Everest and Jennings design of eighty years ago. In 2009, Michael Graves, himself a wheelchair user ever since being paralyzed by an infection, was asked by Stryker, a manufacturer of medical equipment, to take a second look at the hospital transport wheelchair. Graves and his team identified several problems with conventional wheelchairs: they were designed to be self-propelled, although hospital chairs were pushed by attendants who frequently suffered back strain because of the awkward placement of the bicycle-type handles; attendants were obliged to bend down each time they adjusted the footrests; and the large wheels were a liability, as they not only tended to bump into things, they picked up infections from the floor and transmitted them to the patient. Not least, hospitals were constantly restocking wheelchairs because the collapsible model was highly susceptible to theft.
Transport wheel chair (Michael Graves)
The Graves solution looks very different from the familiar Everest and Jennings design. The chair does not fold, although it nests to save space. The rear wheels are about a foot in diameter, and out of reach of the patient. Arm- and footrests swing out of the way, and the brake and footrest controls do not require the attendant to bend down but are foot activated. The vertical push handles comfortably accommodate attendants of different heights. Because the wheelchair is not collapsible, the seat and backrest are cushiony molded plastic rather than fabric slings—much more comfortable.
The Graves wheelchair is a simple design. The front members extend from the small casters and footrests, support the backrest, and become the push handles; the back members extend from the larger wheels to support the seat, and become the armrests. The shape of the armrests assists in getting up. The steel frame is white and the plastic parts are dark blue; the critical control points—footrest and armrest releases and the brake pedal—are highlighted in bright yellow.
Like the Everest and Jennings wheelchair, Graves’s transport chair is a tool that addresses utilitarian problems—and looks it. Graves was a high-fashion architect, not an engineer, but although he designed a famously whimsical whistling tea kettle, his transport chair conforms to the convention that hospital equipment should be “serious”—no frills. Not that a mobile chair has to appear mechanical. We don’t know what Oeben’s fauteuil méchanique looked like, but a surviving eighteenth-century fauteuil de malade is a handsome beechwood armchair upholstered in dark red leather—a domestic easy chair that just happens to be on wheels. Voltaire’s invalid’s chair has survived too, a green velvet armchair on casters that speaks of the salon, not the sickroom. Both are reminders that form does not follow function, it follows culture. Perhaps one day hospital furnishings will look homey rather than institutional—that might not be a bad thing.
ELEVEN
Human Engineering
Chairs existed in dynastic China, Georgian England, Colonial America, and fin-de-siècle Vienna. The methods of manufacture varied, from sophisticated to crude, from handcrafted to industrialized, yet the yokeback chair, the cabriole, the sack-back, and the bentwood chair share essential qualities. They demonstrate that a chair, however it is made, is always a chair; it has legs, a back, a seat, and frequently arms. Chairs have accommodated different postures—more or less upright, more or less relaxed—but the human body is a constant. Or is it?
To begin with, the average male is taller than the average female, with wider shoulders and narrower hips. These differences are compounded because men and women come in distinct body types—endomorph (rotund), mesomorph (muscular and bony), and ectomorph (thin and delicate)—and many combinations in between. Although it is possible to establish statistical means, there is no such thing as an “average adult.” People of average weight are not necessarily of average height, those of average height vary in weight, those of average arm span have different-length torsos, and so on. And there are racial differences: East Asians tend to have shorter legs and arms than Caucasians; Africans, longer.
How can the same chair comfortably accommodate a five-foot, hundred-pound female and a six-foot, two-hundred-pound male? The right armrest height for one person is wrong for another; a chair deep enough for a six-footer will be awkward for a shorter person, and vice versa. One traditional solution was to provide different sizes of chairs. Seventeenth-century Flemish family portraits typically show the father occupying a large armchair, the mother in a smaller armchair, a slightly smaller side chair for the grandmother, and miniature chairs for the children. French eighteenth-century chairs such as the bergère and the chauffeuse, which were intended for women, had smaller dimensions than a typical fauteuil, although they were often wider to accommodate women’s full skirts. Then a subtle shift occurred: cabinetmakers began to make chairs that could be adjusted to suit the sitter. The first modification was an adjustable reclining back, which appeared first in wing chairs and in fauteuils de malade. Adjustable reclining chairs in the form of steamer chairs and deck chairs became popular in the second half of the nineteenth century. These were outdoor chairs, but an indoor reclining chair appeared during the same period. The Morris chair, designed by the Arts and Crafts architect Philip Webb and named after his friend William Morris, was a low wooden armchair with a hinged back whose angle could be altered by degrees. The design migrated to the United States where, adapted by Gustav Stickley, it became a staple of the Craftsman style.
Adjustable chairs were driven by a desire for comfort, but in some settings functionality was the main concern. Dentists, for example, required adjustable chairs. The first American dental chair is credited to Josiah Flagg, Jr., a Boston dentist who in the 1790s added an adjustable padded headrest to a continuous-arm Windsor chair. Reclining backs followed. Barbers, too, needed adjustability; customers had to be upright for haircutting but prone for shaving. In 1904, Samuel Kline of Trenton, New Jersey, filed a patent for a barber chair that incorporated “adjustable seat and back members … with a combined foot and leg rest which latter is so constructed as to be readily adjusted to and from the chair to accommodate persons of different heights.” About the same time as Kline was patenting his barber chair, Josef Hoffmann was designing a chair for sanatorium patients: the Sitzmaschine with a reclining back and a pull-out footrest.
Medical chairs led the way in adjustability. In 1922, Jean Pascaud, a Parisian physician, introduced an anatomical chaise longue that he called Le Sur-repos, which means something like “the restful chair.” Intended for convalescents, the light and elegant chair had a padded seat on a tubular steel base, with a steeply reclining back and a movable headrest. The hinged armrests swung out of the way to facilitate sitting down or getting up. Turning a large wheel on the side rotated the angle of the chair, raising the legs and lowering the head.
In 1928, inspired by Dr. Pascaud, Le Corbusier, Charlotte Perriand, and Pierre Jeanneret designed a tubular steel contoured chaise longue that sat in a cradle so the overall angle could similarly be altered. The Thonet B306 was widely admired by architects but was not a commercial success, perhaps because it lacked arms, which made it uncomfortable. You also had to get out of the chair to change the angle. A British offshoot of the Sur-repos was Foot’s Adjustable Rest-Chair, a domestic easy chair, likewise with hinged arms. This lounge chair could be converted into a chaise longue thanks to a padded footrest that was concealed under the seat. “Simply press a button and the back declines
or automatically rises,” reads the advertisement. “Release the button and the back is instantly locked.” The Rest-Chair resembled a wing chair, and with its paisley-patterned upholstery it looked resolutely old-fashioned, although it was arguably a more advanced “resting machine” than Le Corbusier’s clumsy contraption.
Starting in 1937, Gebrüder Thonet produced an unusual convalescent chair. The designers were the architect brothers Hans and Wassili Luckhardt. The Luckhardts were leading Berlin modernists, but their chair was not a typical Bauhaus product. For one thing, it was made out of wood. With contoured slats and an extendable footrest, it recalled a steamer chair. The resemblance was skin-deep, however, for this was a true mechanical chair. The Luckhardts called it a “movement chair” because the back, seat, and footrest were interconnected, so that as the sitter shifted position, the three parts moved together; tightening a knob fixed the desired angle. Thonet marketed the chair as “Siesta-Medizinal,” and during World War II adapted it for hospitals, using a tubular steel frame with coiled springs supporting a full-length leather pad. A wheelchair version accommodated injured servicemen. Aldous Huxley’s “hospital style of furnishing” had finally come home.
The Luckhardt brothers also designed chairs for Thonet’s Berlin-based competitor, Deutsche Stahlmöbel (German Steel Furniture), known as DESTA. The owner of DESTA was Anton Lorenz, a significant if somewhat shadowy presence on the Berlin prewar avant-garde furniture scene. Lorenz was neither an architect nor a craftsman; he is sometimes described as a businessman, but he wasn’t exactly that either. In some ways he resembles his contemporary Buckminster Fuller—an inventor-entrepreneur. Born in Budapest, Lorenz accompanied his wife, Irene, an opera singer, to Leipzig. In time, he acquired a metalworking business that made locks. In Berlin, Lorenz met his compatriot Kalman Lengyel and became a partner in Standard Möbel, fabricating Marcel Breuer’s tubular furniture in his workshop. After the company was taken over by Thonet, Lorenz continued in the chair business on his own. He demonstrated an unexpected flair for design, as well as proving to be a canny businessman. He had earlier independently registered his own version of a cantilever chair (something that Breuer had neglected to do with the Cesca), and in addition he also acquired the rights to Mart Stam’s cantilever chair. With this legal ammunition, Lorenz sued Thonet, the largest furniture company in the world, for infringement of copyright—and won.
Siesta-Medizinal reclining chair (Hans and Wassili Luckhardt)
Lorenz ultimately reached an agreement with Thonet. His company, DESTA, continued to produce tubular steel furniture designed by himself, the Luckhardts, and prominent architects such as Erich Mendelsohn and Otto Rittweger (Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier resisted Lorenz’s overtures). Lorenz, who was interested in human physiology, engaged the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute to carry out experiments in body posture, photographing subjects in a saltwater tank to document body positions in a situation of near weightlessness. In 1939, he and Hans Luckhardt filed a joint U.S. patent for an adjustable reclining chair with a pivoting footrest that rose as the back of the chair reclined. As we shall see, this device would have a key role in the development of a new kind of chair.
When Germany invaded Poland, Lorenz and his wife were in California on business, and they decided to stay in the United States, where Lorenz continued to work on chairs. He met Mies van der Rohe in Chicago, and the two patented a conchoidal plastic chair, never produced. Lorenz formed a more productive association with Edward J. Barcalo of Buffalo, whose company made a range of metal furniture—hospital beds, cribs, and garden furniture. Barcalo licensed Lorenz and Luckhardt’s reclining mechanism, and in 1946 produced a tubular steel reclining lawn chair, marketed as the BarcaLoafer, as well as a version of the Siesta wheelchair for returning veterans.
Lorenz and Barcalo’s ultimate goal was to produce a reclining chair for the home. This required a different design, because while Americans liked inexpensive chromed-steel dining sets and metal lawn chairs, most people did not consider tubular steel furniture appropriate for the living room. In 1947, the Barcalo Company merged with Chandler Industries, a Buffalo furniture manufacturer, in order to produce a fully upholstered reclining chair. Barcalo provided the mechanism based on Lorenz’s design; Chandler manufactured the body of the chair. The BarcaLounger was born.
The stately BarcaLounger was entirely unlike its Bauhaus ancestor. The reclining machinery was concealed within a plushy carapace of wood framing and sprung upholstery, resulting in a conservatively styled armchair that sacrificed lightness for comfort. Closed, the chair looked like an ordinary upholstered easy chair, but when the sitter pulled a lever the back reclined and a padded footrest swung up. The so-called recliner was first marketed to white-collar executives; a 1955 magazine advertisement shows a man in a business suit sitting in what is described as “the chair that’s teaching America how to relax.” That was not hyperbole; as prices fell, the recliner attracted a wide audience—mostly male—and became the iconic lounge chair of Middle America.1 Recliners were designed to appeal to the widest possible range of tastes; they came in the form of club chairs, wing chairs, and easy chairs, made by companies with catchy names such as Rock-A-Fella, Stratolounger, Slumber Chair, and, of course, La-Z-Boy, another pioneer in the field. Lorenz, with his many patents, benefitted financially from this popularity. One of his last inventions—he died in 1964—was a recliner that provided an intermediate position between upright and horizontal: the television-watching chair.
1950s BarcaLounger
In 1956, in a direct response to the American recliner craze, the Herman Miller company produced a lounge chair designed by Charles and Ray Eames. It was made out of three molded plywood shells—seat, back, and headrest—attached to a metal base with rubber shock mounts. The interior of the shell was heavily padded with foam and upholstered in leather. The veneered shells were Brazilian rosewood and the soft black leather was tufted, giving the chair a luxurious appearance. Although not adjustable, the swiveling chair came with an ottoman and provided the same plushy, legs-up experience as a recliner. Ray Eames described it as “comfortable and un-designy.”
Lounge chair and ottoman (Charles and Ray Eames)
The Eames chair was intended for the high-end market, and Herman Miller was careful to call it a “lounge chair,” not to be confused with the plebeian recliner. Urban sophisticates scorned the recliner as a symbol of slothfulness and indolence, and derided its conservative styling. President Kennedy’s folksy rocking chair was chic; President Johnson’s turquoise leather recliner was not. Of course, this was mainly snobbery. Like fins on cars, Dagwood sandwiches, and leisure suits, the American recliner was simply déclassé.
Problem-solving
In the late 1970s, Herman Miller, now a leader in high-design residential and office furniture, took aim at the fastest-growing population segment in the country—the elderly—and commissioned the designers William Stumpf and Don Chadwick to design a chair. The pair decided to focus on the recliner because it was popular with older people and was used not only in homes but also in retirement communities, assisted-living facilities, and even hospitals. They concluded that existing recliners were ill-suited to extended use because the cushiony seats did not offer good support, and the nonbreathable upholstery material, typically leather or Naugahyde, could actually cause bedsores. They substituted a breathable plastic mesh that was cooler and offered better support. They called their product the Sarah Chair.
It took a decade to develop the Sarah Chair, but by then Herman Miller had gotten cold feet. One problem was marketing. Recliners were typically sold in mainstream furniture outlets and department stores, not the kinds of places that carried Herman Miller chairs. Moreover, the public associated the recliner with mainstream taste, and the company feared that a Herman Miller recliner might actually hurt the high-design brand. The project was shelved.
Several years later, Herman Miller asked Stumpf and Chadwick to adapt some of the ideas from the Sarah Chair to
a more conventional product: an office chair. The general configuration of office chairs was well established by this time. The secretarial chair was an armless swivel chair on casters, with adjustable height and back. Next in the office chair hierarchy was the managerial chair, with arms and a tilt-back mechanism. At the top of the pyramid was the executive chair, usually leather and with a taller back. A typical executive chair of the 1960s had a swivel-tilt mechanism and two controls: seat height and tilt tension—everything else was fixed.
Swivel-tilt chairs, which originated in the middle of the nineteenth century, were originally intended for the home—they were, in effect, mechanical rocking chairs. They were usually low-back Windsor chairs or fully upholstered easy chairs. By the early 1900s, these had evolved into banker’s chairs and stenographer’s chairs, although it took several decades for the office chair to gain wide acceptance. A 1912 photograph of the New York Times newsroom shows the pressmen sitting not on office chairs but on Thonet N. 18 café chairs.
Stumpf had already designed an office chair for Herman Miller. Unlike other office chairs, his tilted in such a way that the feet stayed flat on the floor. In addition to the usual tilt-back controls, the user could also adjust the height and angle of the back, and the height, width, and angle of the arms. There was a further refinement. Studies had shown that in terms of body weight and height as much as 11 percent of the workforce fell outside the statistical norm, so the chair, called the Ergon, came in two sizes: small and large.
Stumpf and Chadwick incorporated the adjustable features of the Ergon Chair into their design, added lumbar support, and went one better by providing three sizes: small, medium, and large. They also did something more radical—they got rid of the upholstery. The Ergon Chair, like all office chairs, had a thick fabric-covered foam seat and back. Taking their cue from the Sarah Chair, the designers substituted woven plastic mesh, which resembled traditional caning but was more resilient.2 Unlike the Sarah, which had thin padding, the mesh was left exposed. The absence of padding increased breathability, which reduced the buildup of body heat that normally occurs in a foam-padded chair. The paper-thin and semitransparent mesh gave the chair its name—Aeron.
Now I Sit Me Down Page 15