The Aeron chair is a Herman Miller

Herman Miller (office equipment)

Herman Miller, Inc., based in Zeeland, Michigan, is a major American manufacturer of office furniture and equipment, as well as furniture for the home. It is notable as one of the first companies to produce modern furniture and, under the guidance of Design Director George Nelson, is likely the...

 product designed in 1994 by Don Chadwick

Don Chadwick

Don Chadwick was born in Los Angeles and developed an interest in furniture making from his grandfather, a cabinetmaker. He studied design at the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked for architect Victor Gruen, and in 1964 founded his own practice...

 and Bill Stumpf

Bill Stumpf

William Eugene "Bill" Stumpf was a designer for Herman Miller who helped design the Aeron and Ergon chairs.Stumpf's battle really began in the 1960s. "Everything goes back to those days at the University of Wisconsin–Madison," he said, referring to the postgraduate years he spent studying and...

. It is an ergonomic chair

Chair

A chair is a stable, raised surface used to sit on, commonly for use by one person. Chairs are most often supported by four legs and have a back; however, a chair can have three legs or could have a different shape depending on the criteria of the chair specifications. A chair without a back or...

 regarded by many users as inherently very comfortable due to its wide range of fit (available in three sizes) and adjustability. Its novel design has gained it a spot in the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

's permanent collection. The chair's exclusivity became a symbol of the dot-com bubble

Dot-com bubble

The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

 in the late 1990s, and by 2010 the Aeron chair has become so prevalent that a large number of independent refurbishers and resellers not affiliated with Herman Miller specialize in the Aeron .

The chair departs from a typical upholstery-over-cushioning-base design. Instead, the seat and back are made of a stretched, semi-transparent, and flexible mesh called Pellicle. It can be customized through modular extensions like lumbar

Lumbar

In tetrapod anatomy, lumbar is an adjective that means of or pertaining to the abdominal segment of the torso, between the diaphragm and the sacrum ...

 support, sacral

Sacrum

In vertebrate anatomy the sacrum is a large, triangular bone at the base of the spine and at the upper and back part of the pelvic cavity, where it is inserted like a wedge between the two hip bones. Its upper part connects with the last lumbar vertebra, and bottom part with the coccyx...

 support (dubbed PostureFit), fixed or adjustable armrests and varied bases to accommodate diverse fields of deployment.

Bill Stumpf came up with the name Aeron which was derived from the word aeration which describes one of the comfort aspects of the mesh suspension.

The Aeron includes a 12-year warranty backed by Herman Miller. Since the Aeron has now been on the market for more than 12 years, many businesses have begun offering repair services to complement the factory warranty. The 12-year factory warranty provides repairs through both the manufacturer and authorized resellers and according to the terms set forth by Herman Miller is non-transferable from the original owner.

In April 2010, Business Week published an article which cast doubt on the ergonomic benefits of the Aeron chair. The article includes comments from Don Chadwick, who says he wasn't hired to design the ideal product for an eight-hour-workday; he was hired to update Herman Miller's previous best-seller. "We were given a brief and basically told to design the next-generation office chair," he says. Nevertheless, the popularity of the Aeron chair and the notion of its ergonomic support has continued.

Awards

• Aeron Chair named one of "Designs Greatest Hits" in Your Company magazine.
• "Designs of the Decade" Gold Winner in "Office Furniture" from the Industrial Designers Society of America
  Industrial Designers Society of America
  Industrial Designers Society of America is an organization of professional industrial designers primarily in the United States. Recently IDSA has started chapters in Canada and in China...
  
   & BusinessWeek
  BusinessWeek
  Bloomberg Businessweek, commonly and formerly known as BusinessWeek, is a weekly business magazine published by Bloomberg L.P. It is currently headquartered in New York City.- History :...
  
  for Aeron chair.
• International Plastics Consumer Product Design Award from the Society of Plastics Engineers
  Society of Plastics Engineers
  The Society of Plastics Engineers is an international organization dedicated to the advancement of knowledge and education for all plastics professionals.The SPE was founded in 1942...
  
  for Aeron chair.
• The Aeron work stool won the 2006 Attendees' Choice Award from the National Ergonomics Conference and Exposition.

External links

• Herman Miller Aeron Product Page