ORANGEBOX SEREN CHAIR
As shared work-spaces become increasingly common, office environments need to be more versatile than ever before and our seating more easily adaptable to multiple users. The Seren meeting chair redefines the levels of quality, comfort and ease of use you can expect from an entry level seating range.
But in most offices it’s easy to see that lots of people don’t really adjust their chair properly. This makes it even more important that our seating is able to keep us healthy and supported without a complex set up that people haven’t the time or the inclination to go through.
Research tells us up to 80% of people don’t adjust their chairs properly.
Orangebox recognise these as design problems, not people problems, so rather than focusing on more complex adjustments and even more training, they’re always working to deliver smarter products that are easier to use.
What makes Seren so simple to use?
The answer for is to provide the greatest amount of adaptability we can but in such a way that the chair is more intuitive to use than ever. We have removed the need for some of the usual adjustments by making the chair to do the work for you. The weight balancing mechanism automatically delivers the right amount of resistance when you recline in the chair, so you can get on with what you are doing without even thinking about it. The controls that are there are sensibly placed and clearly labelled; those that move the seat, are on the seat, it’s really that simple!
Where does the comfort come from?
It sounds like a pretty obvious thing to say but a great office chair needs to be able to deliver quite a lot – it has to look attractive, deliver great support and offer terrific value for money. First and foremost though, its most important role is to be fantastically comfortable to sit on.
Comfort is often a difficult thing to define and is also very personal. A great back shape is crucial of course but it could be argued that comfort is determined as much by our brains as it is by our bodies, in the same way that good food seems to taste even better if it looks great on the plate. We have designed Seren with a completely upholstered back for exactly this reason. The softness and tactile quality you get from fabric goes way beyond what is delivered by a plastic back in terms of re-inforcing the brain’s perception of comfort.
“Designing a product is designing a relationship” – Steve Rogers
The appearance of the back yoke helps re-inforce the feeling of support; it’s a very human characteristic to feel better if you know someone’s ‘got your back’. If something looks comfortable & supportive and the sitting experience backs this up too, the chair can really say that it has done its job.
How can an entry level chair deliver ‘best practice’ environmental performance?
We don’t believe in green design, we just believe in good design. We’ve reached a time now when we all need to be much more aware, not just of the level of our consumption, but also of what “stuff ” our things are actually made of & where it comes from. So we have always strived to get the utmost value out of the very least amount of material. If you start with the thought “what could this be in its next life?” you design things in a very different way. Aiming to use smart design to allow ourselves (or someone else) to be able to eventually recover the materials invested in our products; to promote closed loop cycles of use and ultimately, to do away with the notion of landfill altogether. This means the design team employing a number of eco-design strategies within the development of a chair like Seren, looking at materials, assembly and energy issues and working closely with their supply chain to reduce product miles along the way.
The Seren task chair and meeting chair is available now through designFARM.