Chairs Suck! Good Chair Design is Impossible!
Claims Colin McSwiggen in Jacobin, a NYC based internet magazine.
Collin says:
…Chairs Suck! All of them. No designer has ever made a good chair, because it is impossible. Some are better than others, but all are bad!
His piece is worth reading and gives us something to think about. Chairs can be dangerous for our health.
What makes chairs so awful for the body? That’s a complicated question to answer, because different chairs get different things wrong. Uncomfortable chairs typically put adverse pressure on some part of the body or require excessive muscular work in order to sit. This can cause soreness and encourage the sitter to adopt slouched postures that restrict circulation, impede respiratory and intestinal function, and lead to musculoskeletal injuries.
Comfy chairs are even worse. By encouraging the sitter to remain in a single static position for long durations without moving, they put extended, unrelieved stress on the spine, weaken the muscles that support the body’s frame and prevent injury, and cause the same circulatory problems as their less comfortable counterparts. And that’s just the beginning.
He continues with a long piece that chairs are thrown upon us by our rulers and by the industrial revolution.
