Designing Aeron

Designers Don Chadwick and Bill Stumpf explored new materials that could replicate the cooling effect of historic wicker furniture and studied human sitting habits to create Herman Miller's groundbreaking Aeron task chair. One of the last in a series of experimental prototypes, this 1994 version incorporates the distinctive skeletal appearance that exemplified the production Aeron introduced later that year.

In the 1980s, Herman Miller furniture company designers Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick created an easy chair for the elderly--called the Sarah Chair--but it was never commercially manufactured. Stumpf and Chadwick recognized that the modern workplace could benefit from the solutions they developed for the Sarah Chair. They used the lessons learned--and three more years of research--to create the Aeron, a groundbreaking office chair.