Humanscale are now assembling Liberty Chairs in South Africa through Formfunc. We visited the factory for a behind-the-scenes peek into where office thrones comes from.
Not all chairs are created equal. And, when it comes to where you put your tush for eight hours every day, and winning the all-important office Olympics, it’s important to know the “Diffrient”.
Niels Diffrient is an American industrial designer who coined the concept of ergonomics in 1974. In 1999 he designed the Freedom Chair for New York-based office company, Humanscale. Besides being moulded from an X-ray of the human spine sitting at a desk, what distinguishes the Freedom Chair (and its sequel the 2004 Liberty Chair, plus pretty much all of Niels’s office thrones) is that you don’t need a PhD to adjust a gazillion knobs to make it comfy.
Only the height can be adjusted while the backrest and armrests respond to you simply sitting forward or back. With that leaving us to get on with our Pinterest obsession, the announcement that Humanscale will now be assembling Liberty Chairs in South Africa also means there’s no waiting time on orders.
Initiated and driven by Formfunc Studio, Humanscale’s exclusive dealer partner in southern Africa, this promises job creation and skills development, since the factory floor manager from the main production plant in Dublin will be training the local assembly staff. We think it’s a great boon for our country’s ailing manufacturing sector, not to mention the benefits for our butts!
Liberty Chair, from R8 750; Freedom Chair, from R10 450, formfunc.co.za, humanscale.com
