In the modern office world, every new piece of furniture has to prove itself. It needs to have reason to exist. Is it more beautiful than the competition? Does it feature design work and features that out-distance all the other office chairs? Is it more comfortable or more supportive than the average chair? With the Embody Chair by Herman Miller, all of these questions can be resoundingly answered in the affirmative. This is one of those rare chairs has come out at precisely the right time—today’s modern office is becoming more and more computer-driven, and therefore more sedentary—and it focuses on precisely the right things: comfort, design, ergonomics, sustainability, back support, and flexibility. As the office becomes more than just a place to do business, the office chair needs to change with the needs of the time. The Embody Chair is the new mold for a successful ergonomic chair.
The Embody Chair by Herman Miller represents a revolution in comfort, efficiency, sustainability and design. It’s a one-of-a-kind desk chair; it is the premier office chair designed in this century, with enough engineering, design, and artistic innovation to satisfy the needs of any office worker or business. The Embody Chair has yet to be improved upon when it comes to high–quality, high–performance office furniture, and Smart Furniture is proud to offer it to our customers.
Embody has won awards from nearly every major furniture referendum, been certified by the most trusted names in the green industry as safe and sustainable, and been met with praise by critics and users. Want to learn more? Visit our main Embody Chair page for a wealth of information on the Embody Chair.
Comfort
The Embody Chair by Herman Miller offers unprecedented comfort by providing exceptional support for your back (including lumbar support), stimulating your circulation to improve blood flow, and using a revolutionary pixelated cushioning system that guarantees maximum comfort at work or the home office. These features go toward fixing the three biggest problems with non-ergonomic office furniture: little back support, low health benefit, and badly or carelessly designed cushioning systems. Many office chairs on the modern furniture market give you plenty of padding and even recline features, but the Embody Chair can offer so much more than that.
The revolutionary design of the chair, coupled with ergonomic innovation and a solid grounding in the needs of the consumer have forged in the Embody a perfect storm of comfort aids. When it comes to your back, you have to have total and optimized support for the best sense of comfort and health. When it comes to cushions, you can’t rely only on padding and traditional materials like leather; you need ergonomically developed, technologically proficient new technologies that bring comfort, temperature control, and good circulation.
Back support, better health, and cushioning systems: why are these three aspects of a chair so important, and how did the designers at Herman Miller make sure the Embody Chair dealt with and fixed them? Back support—especially lumbar support— is absolutely essential to your well–being when you sit in a chair for large portions of your day. Without proper support, your spine can be twisted or subjected to too much pressure for long periods of time, leading to pain and discomfort as well as deterioration of your spine itself. Embody addresses this problem by making sure that at every point of your sitting experience you’re comfortable and physiologically sound.
The second aspect of non-ergonomic seating, the nil-to-negative rating on health benefits, is an issue that only the Embody really addresses. It is the first health–positive chair, the first to actually improve your health and quality of life at work in a significant way. This is accomplished by focusing on increased circulation and decreased stress. The chair has been painstakingly designed to exclude all possibility of nerve damage or discomfort, as well as pinching or pressure when properly adjusted. This makes your circulation easier and more uninhibited. That, in turn, makes your brain more alert, focused, and productive. Not only does the Embody Chair increase your circulation, it decreases your joint stress and pain. This leads to longer periods where you can sit and stand with no discomfort whatsoever.
The Embody Chair can improve your health and body function by increasing your circulation, limiting your daily discomfort and stress–inducing posture, and blunting the impact of prolonged sitting on your joints and muscle tissues. More and more, American work environments and home offices are dominated by computers, and the Embody Chair is the prescription for the damage that sedentary working can inflict on your body. When a chair improves your circulation and significantly cuts the daily discomfort and stress on bones and joints, that’s a health–positive chair. That’s the Embody. Here’s a closer examination of all the elements that make this chair so superlative.
Pixelated Support
The Pixelated Support System, designed by Jeff Weber and Bill Stumpf, is what makes the Embody Chair so outrageously comfortable. The support system consists of dozens of inter-dependent, inter-locking “mesh” chair materials that respond to the pressure of a body by distributing the weight as evenly as possible, decreasing the stress on your muscle tissue, back and shoulders. Even weight distribution is vitally important to the success or failure of any ergonomic chair. Without it, the user starts to experience pressure points, undue strain, and wear and tear. Even weight distribution assures that your back, thighs, and shoulders aren’t bearing more than their due (or their capacity) when it comes to weight. It assures the user of a healthier, more comfortable, and more physiologically sound sitting experience. The principles of good balance and weight distribution have been more thoroughly explored in the recliner industry, a part of the market that focuses much more on comfort than the average office chair. So the Embody Chair is a synthesis of several different kinds of furniture making; it learned how to be beautiful from the design and style world, and it learned how to be exquisitely comfortable from the recliner industry. After all, you spend much more time at work than you do lounging in your recliner; why shouldn’t your work chair be just as comfortable, or even more comfortable, than the recliner? The Embody chair is.
The Embody Chair is also specifically designed to benefit the spine by keeping it in a true alignment, even when you’re leaning back or twisting in your seat. In this way, no matter what your posture or favored sitting position, the Embody helps to keep your spine healthy. Good posture as well as bad posture find support in the Embody, and the innovative engineering that went into the backing of the chair assures users that their spines will be protected and comfortable for as long as they use their Embody Chairs. While there is often a single proscribed way that people should sit, everyone knows that it’s rare to find an individual who actually sits this way. Most people are more comfortable sitting in their own way; reclining, or slouching slightly, or with their legs at odd angles or under the seat. With the Embody, the individual is empowered to sit however he wants to, without experiencing stress or pain in the muscles, joints, and bones. There’s no reason you shouldn’t sit in a way that makes you as comfortable as possible, and the Embody exists to allow you to sit exactly as you please.
Speaking of moving in your chair, the Embody also employs a beautifully–designed narrow seat back which enables a much greater range of movement than the typical office chair does. The seat back on the Embody frees up your shoulders, preventing the hunching and cramping caused by most desk chairs, and allowing you to turn and bend in comfort. When seen from the front or back, this narrowing back provides the Embody with much of its stylistic power. It’s different from the norm, not only in terms of comfort, but also in terms of simple style, form, and construction. One of the most alluring things about this chair is the enthusiasm and open-mindedness of its creators to come up with something truly original, while at the same time completely comfortable and supportive. The seat back is just one instance of the ideal marriage of good design and good ergonomics. The chair works because it incorporates both into an integrated whole.
The shoulders are an oft–overlooked part of the back, but research has shown that stress is often “carried” in the shoulders as tension and muscle tightness. When you’re working, it’s not only your back that’s sometimes hunched over; it’s also your shoulders. Whenever you twist in your seat, reach for folders or a keyboard, your shoulders are taking on a lot of the load of movement and torque. That’s why truly ergonomic chairs like the Embody go out of their way to address the problems of the shoulder for the user. In the Embody Chair, that tapered back is the most prominent solution. The way the chair frees up the shoulders is an excellent way to relieve stress, improve circulation (through movement), and allow you to move more easily and comfortably. With the Embody Chair, your entire body—not just parts of your body—is supported and made comfortable. Through careful engineering and design, as well as a genuine concern for improving how you move and work while at the office, Embody has been made into a chair that solves the riddle of office discomfort once and for all.
Innovative Spine
The “spine” of the Embody, the elegantly curved apparatus that extends from the base of the seat up the back of the chair to the shoulders, was designed with comfort and support in mind. The interlocking, flexing support structures that branch off from the main part of the spine provide incredible, personalized comfort and support. Not only that, but they are a work of sculptural art in and of themselves. The spine, attached only at the top and base of the chair and winding its way down the back, is both handsome and useful. In this way, the spine and the flexible backing to which it attaches succeed on several fronts: as an aesthetic achievement, a great piece of design, and an innovative work of engineering. Both pieces support and increase the comfort of the user’s back, seat, and spine while at the same time improving and abetting your natural posture. It also looks great—elegant, shapely, and in perfect harmony with the rest of the chair. The story of the Embody Chair is certainly the story of great style and design married to great ergonomic and technical achievement; the spine and backing of the chair are just one more engaging chapter.
Comfort and support are two of the most important concepts in the design and execution of the Embody Chair, and they have been both accomplished and exceeded. The spine allows users to twist and recline at previously unavailable angles. This allows them to find the sitting position that’s most comfortable for them and that accomplishes their own personal seating goals and preferences. Most chairs eschew this kind of generous design, instead insisting—through their construction and make-up—that the user adapt his sitting and working style to the chair, rather than the other way around. The designers at Herman Miller were interested in a more accommodating—even gracious—arrangement. Charles and Ray Eames, two of the greatest furniture designers ever to live, often said that the best furniture adhered to a guest/host philosophy; that every element of the chair would be prepared as if by a gracious and welcoming host, in expectation that an unknown guest would find everything perfectly to his or her liking. The Embody Chair is a perfect example of truly fine guest/host design, with no comfort or support spared in the execution. It is a welcoming host, capable of making your day at work, as well as your work life, better.
The spine of the chair is where it all begins. The spine doesn’t just bend and twist in revolutionary ways; it also supports the user’s spine and improves back and body health. In this, it’s just like your real spine; not rigid, unbending, or unable to adapt. In fact, it’s the exact opposite, and a necessary and welcome paradox; flexible bone, moving support system. The flexible, sturdy, beautifully engineered Embody Chair spine is just one more feather in the cap of the engineers, designers and artists responsible for the groundbreaking design and ergonomic innovation of the chair.
When it comes to being the most comfortable, healthy, supportive desk chair out there, the Embody has no competition. Get comfortable. Buy an Embody today.
Productivity
Nowadays, most of our time at work is spent in cubicles or at desks working on computers. Research shows that the technological revolution has led to an equally radical office revolution. Reliance on computing, long stretches sitting at a desk, carpal tunnel syndrome, back and shoulder problems related to extended sitting—all of these are new issues largely unaddressed to a satisfactory extent by the furniture companies providing office chairs to workers and businesses. The Embody Chair was built to put an end to all that. The features of the chair, the ergonomic engineering and the flexing, highly adjustable nature of the design all contribute to an alleviation of stress, discomfort, and aches and pains. Most of the maladies of the modern office can be effectively combated by the Embody (sorry, we can’t do anything about your boss!) as it was built specifically and wonderfully to do just that. Of course, the benefits of removing those thorns-in-the-side aren’t singular; while you will certainly be more comfortable, there is more to be gained.
All of the discomfort and all of the small nuisances of modernity (carpal tunnel syndrome; back, joint and muscle pain; headaches; bad circulation; etc.) can lead to a lot of lost productivity, another pitfall of the modern workplace. Think about your own office space: how often do you have to get out of your chair and stretch, or take a little walk to get circulation back in your legs, or just shake your head because you’re losing focus on the task at hand? That’s a lot of time lost to you and your business. Now think about a product that can remove all those obstacles to your productivity. What if there were a chair that could keep you focused, keep you comfortable, raise your productivity, even make your body healthier? It’s not a fantasy—it’s on the market, and it’s being sold at Smart Furniture. The Embody Chair is the premier office chair on the market for myriad reasons, but one of the greatest is the productivity it can provide to you and your office. There aren’t very many chairs on the market that can actually make you more money through increased productivity, but the Embody Chair by Herman Miller is one of them. The future is now.
The revolutionary mesh Pixellated Support System has been scientifically proven to increase bloodflow, including flow to the brain. How does it do this? By erasing the hard edges and poorly designed surfaces that many chairs employ, all of which contribute to slow circulation. Circulation is a vitally important and often overlooked bodily function that is absolutely essential to keeping your brain and body bright and functioning at an appropriately high level. Sitting in an Embody doesn’t just make you happier—it makes you quicker, more alert, and generally more on top of things at work. It genuinely makes you healthier without any invasive techniques whatsoever. If you want to be more awake, more productive, more focused at work, you won’t find a better chair on the market that the Embody. Embody is so comfortable and supportive, it’s like having a partner at your desk—a partner who’ll align your back, rub your shoulders, help you get your things, and keep you happy. Get productive. Buy an Embody today.
Sustainability
The modern world faces several different obstacles that were foreign to the pre-tech boom economy. Included among these is the threat of global warming and the emphasis on environmental responsibility and conservation. Now, more than ever, it’s vitally important to conserve our resources and make smart, informed choices about what we buy, what we keep, and what we throw away and recycle. With the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the costs of making the wrong (or easier, sometimes cheaper) choice when it comes to environmental concerns can be devastating. Of course, buying the wrong office chair isn’t going to be any sort of environmental disaster. But it could end up in a landfill; it could end up contributing to downgraded air quality in your office; it could last only a short time and be thrown away, speeding up the consumer process and going un-recycled.
With the Embody Chair, you can be assured that none of those things will be a problem for you or for your company. The challenges of environmental furniture–making are ones that Smart Furniture and Herman Miller strive to overcome with innovative technologies and green-conscious products. Embody Chair by Herman Miller is among the most sustainable, recyclable, green, energy-efficient chairs on the market. The designers and manufacturer of the Embody Chair are committed to environmentally sustainable business practices that improve your quality of life as they improve the quality of the earth. To achieve their goals, the makers of the chair put it through a rigorous, safe, clean manufacturing process—eliminating waste, limiting their use of resources, and ensuring that the chair is of the absolute highest quality.
The factories that make the Embody Chair by Herman Miller are right here in America, and they are on the bleeding edge of forward-thinking sustainable processes. They don’t waste water or energy; they conserve power; they produce little more than a single garbage can’s worth of non-recyclable waste in a single month. And that’s every month, turning out thousands and thousands of chairs. The Herman Miller manufacturing facilities are proof that furniture, and really any kind of product, can always be made the right way, with the right materials, and not just with good intentions. These factories are not drags on Herman Miller’s bottom line; they are boons to it. More facts:
The Embody Chair was manufactured at MBDC Silver Cradle to Cradle certified levels. That means it’s assembled using 100 percent renewable energy. This means that the Embody Chair is composed of environmentally safe and healthy materials, and is designed for material reuse in a closed-loop system, such as recycling or composting. MBDC painstakingly examines the chemicals and base materials that go into every product they certify, and the stamp of approval they give to responsible furniture is a real accomplishment in sustainable furniture circles. More and more, responsible vendors like Smart Furniture are coming to rely on the MBDC label to affirm or deny the true environmental quality of a product they’re deciding whether or not to sell. It’s a valuable seal of approval, and it’s got its stamp all over the Embody Chair.
The Embody Chair is composed of steel, plastic, aluminum, textile, foam, and other materials, but it is up to 95 percent recyclable. Of all the material that makes up the chair, 42 percent was itself recycled before being re-purposed as the greenest, most sustainable office chair of its quality. Landfill waste (waste that can’t be recycled) has become a serious and growing problem. Many products that go into landfills can take hundreds, even thousands of years to fully decompose. As landfills take up more and more space, they not only eliminate natural areas—they contribute to degraded air quality (and degraded air smell!). To stop the encroaching spread of landfills, it’s vitally important to recycle everything we can, and the Embody Chair can help you do that. Aside from being merely recyclable, it’s also easily disassembled, making its component parts independently recyclable. And, of course, if it’s easy to take it apart, customers are much more likely to actually recycle the materials, rather than deposit them in a landfill or a landfill–bound trash can.
When you buy an Embody Chair from Smart Furniture, you never have to worry about the impact you may be making on the environment. Herman Miller strives to make their products, buildings, practices, and shipping the most sustainable on the market. Herman Miller has an extensive Design for the Environment initiative (DfE) which keeps the entire company on an ambitious and much–praised road to total environmental sustainability, including zero carbon emissions by 2020.
Why are sustainability, recyclable products, and energy efficiency important?
Because having a greener, more sustainable earth is the only way to take care of its resources. Many companies aren’t willing to change their manufacturing policies to acknowledge this need, but Herman Miller has taken it head on, and that dedication is embodied in none other than the Embody Chair.
The factories and manufacturing facilities that Herman Miller uses to create the chair are almost 100 percent clean and energy efficient. And, if Herman Miller’s plans proceed as intended, by the year 2020 they will be totally clean and efficient. These factories don’t waste energy or creat undue waste; in fact, only about a garbage can’s worth of landfill waste is produced every month, far less than the average furniture manufacturing facility. Energy efficiency is the kind of thing that can save us untold amounts of money and time in the future (and in the present). It’s an important investment in the America we’d like to leave to coming generations.
Recycling is part of that same ethos. Rather than taking up huge amounts of space in landfills where they don’t decay for years and years (sometimes hundreds of years), Herman Miller has made it possible for you to easily and conveniently recycle the parts of your Embody Chair, as well as the parts of almost every chair they produce. Keeping waste out of landfills and within a looped recycling system is a great way to save space, save environmental areas, spend less money and stimulate the economy. Recycling is always the right choice when it’s available, and Herman Miller and Smart Furniture are on the front line of making it easy for consumers.
Design
So we know that the Embody Chair by Herman Miller is the most comfortable, productivity–increasing, sustainable office chair on the market. But after all that, we may be leaving out its most attractive quality: how attractive it is, and how very well designed.
Designed by Jeff Weber and Bill Stumpf and produced by Herman Miller, the Embody Chair is a work of art. Practical in application and with full attention given to aesthetic detail, this is an office chair produced to enrich every aspect of your life. Therefore, every aspect of the chair was gone over with a fine–toothed comb and tuned to perfection; the chair was drawn, re-drawn, engineered and re-engineered, down to the very last detail. The Embody Chair is the product of years of work and research by one of the finest design teams ever assembled. Their mission was as simple as it was difficult; to create a chair that was ergonomically correct in every sense, that responded to every need of every user, and that was—at the same time—a beautiful and classic piece of art and design.
How did they do it? With an open-minded, open-ended approach that led them to take ergonomic concerns just as seriously as aesthetic concerns. The final product would be a synthesis of both. One example that illustrates this technique is the back of the chair. The back of the Embody Chair is one of the first things people notice and comment on when they first see it. They’re drawn to the unusual tapered appearance of the back, they’re drawn to the intricate laced effect given by the multiple flexing back supports ranging out horizontally from the spine of the chair.
They’re drawn to the spine itself, which describes a lovely curve all the way down to the back of the seat pan. The overall visual effect is striking, not only because it looks great but also because it looks different. No one has ever seen an office chair that looks like this, because there’s never been one. The reason, of course, is because the designers weren’t thinking exclusively about aesthetics. They were equally thinking of ergonomics. The back is tapered not only because it looks good and has an original quality, but because it works well with your back and shoulders. The tapered back creates freedom of movement, and it also takes stress and pressure of your shoulders and shoulder blades. So an ergonomic solution turned into stylistic innovation; where one begins and one ends it’s hard to tell, and that’s the magic of the Embody Chair. Furthermore, the interlocking, flexing pieces ranging along the backing of the chair serve a very serious ergonomic purpose; they support your back in distinct zones, according to the Tri-Flex system.
The pieces are meant to flex and bend independently of one another, and that gives your back more freedom, more support, and more comfort. And, of course, they look great; they’re original, they’re well proportioned, they just work. Where does one purpose end and the other begin? It’s hard to say. The spine itself adheres to the same principles. It bends and flexes, just like an actual spine, to accommodate your movements. It serves as a base for other functions of the chair, just like an actual spine. Its purpose is support, just like an actual spine. But its arc is lovely, striking, and free-standing (it seems). It’s an aesthetic accomplishment.
Marriage of design and ergonomics is the story of the Embody Chair, and for the marriage to work the designers had to actually look past features and appearances. Just as the worst thing you can do with your golf swing is try to swing too hard and hit the ball far, the worst thing to do for a designer is focus exclusively on aesthetic value; it closes doors, keeps you on a single track, and doesn’t aid the actual user of the chair in a physical way. The Embody Chair is a proud accomplishment of great, open-minded office chair design.
Value
When it comes to value, some folks are suspicious of the Embody Chair. Because it’s so far beyond the average office chair in terms of comfort, support, quality, design, and ergonomics, it costs a bit more than the average office chair as well. When you’re looking at a chair to get for work (as opposed to one for the home, where you think of it more as a possession and design element than as a tool for getting things done) the price tag is often a number one priority. People don’t often like to spend much money on equipment for work, seeing it as an opportunity to be frugal or merely take what’s given. For some reason, customers don’t always take work furniture as seriously as they do home furniture; they don’t care as much if it looks good, has personality, is extremely comfortable and supportive, etc. But this is the wrong way to look at it. The Embody Chair isn’t just a great chair, a great piece of design, and a comfortable and supportive work station. It’s also an investment—an investment in yourself, in your personal office, and in your business as a whole.
How so? The Embody Chair is the world’s first health positive chair, for starters. That means that, when you sit in an Embody, you’re not just staying healthy. You’re becoming healthier. With the Embody Chair’s revolutionary engineering and ergonomic commitment, when you sit in it your spine, muscles, shoulders, and neck are supported in a way that’s not just comfortable, but that actually increases your level of overall health. Your spine will feel and be better; your muscles will be less sore; your circulation will be much better, with no more numbness or uncomfortable stretches. Your joints and bones will be less stressed and more healthful and flexible. Your brain, freed from the necessities of worry and poor circulation, will work better and faster; better circulation means better thought processing, better organizational thinking, and better work … period.
The Embody Chair is not only health positive, it’s work positive. Not just an investment in health and comfort and support, but an investment in actual goals at work, the Embody Chair can help you work better and more productively; who knows, it may be the edge you need to get that project off the ground or get that promotion. It’s a true and total investment; mind, body, energy, and productivity.
There are other reasons the chair is an investment as well. For instance, take a look at the excellent Herman Miller warranty placed on the chair. Herman Miller is a proud company, one of the giants of the international furniture industry and certainly one of the founding fathers of American fine furniture purveyance. They stand by their work not only with words and sales language but with actual contracts and warranties. For the Embody Chair, an extremely durable and sustainable piece of office furniture, the warranty is set to last for up to 12 years—including labor—after your purchase. 12 years; that’s a childhood, more than a decade, three presidential terms; that’s quite a few years to guarantee a product that gets as much rough and tumble wear and tear as an office chair. Something that has weight placed on it for up to eight hours a day, five days a week; weight that shifts, moves, sits down and gets up quickly. This is a chair that was built to last, and Herman Miller has earned your confidence with an incredible and incredibly long-lasting warranty. So let’s look at real value over that time period.
Say you buy an Embody Chair, and you keep it for five years. Five years is less than half of the warranty, and it’s unlikely you’ll only keep it for that short amount of time. But in the interest of making an example, let’s say you trade up in only five years. If that happens, in exchange for all the increased productivity, in exchange for the health benefits and the comfort and support offered every day, eight hours a day, for half a decade, in exchange for exquisite design and beautiful style that can liven your personal office … in exchange for all of that you will have only paid 65 cents a day. That’s right. Over only five years, less than half the term of the warranty, the Embody will only cost you 65 cents a day. If you had an opportunity to be more healthy today, to think quicker and work better today, and to be more comfortable and more supported today, would you pay 65 cents? You’re not alone: almost anyone would. And that’s why the Embody is such a great investment.
Let’s look at that value over a longer period, say 12 years, the length of the full warranty. What would you be paying then in exchange for better health and circulation, increased productivity, comfort, support, and ergonomic design? 27 cents a day. Just a little more than a quarter per day will buy you all the comfort and support you need at work. It will buy you an incredible piece of design sure to last you as long as you need it. It will buy you better health, better focus, and better and more productive days at work. And isn’t that worth so much more than 27 cents a day?
The Embody Chair as Art
The Embody Chair embraces the conventional purpose of the office chair with non-traditional design. Not only is the design calibrated to enrich your work experience, it represents a step forward in what an office chair can be. It’s a new design, a new look; users have never seen an office chair quite like this one, and with good reason. The team of artists and designers who worked on the chair broke every mold they could, re-defining what an office chair looks like, what an office chair can do. At the same time they improved upon and sharpened everything an office chair could already do and made it better. The Embody Chair is the embodiment of years of research and care combined with a rare and non-traditional artistic license. The lines of the Embody chair are elegant and curved: they echo the themes of comfort while appearing ergonomically futuristic. The seat and the back are not connected at a joint. Rather, they curve into an ever-narrowing space that relieves stress on the thighs. The seat back narrows rather that widens as it goes up the back, and is therefore out of the way of the shoulders and arms. The back of the chair is supported by brackets that suggest a computer chip. They have a practical purpose, ensuring a wide range of movement in the chair, but they also suggest innovation and style. The Embody Chair is lacking for neither. It is also not lacking in personal touch—the color, and therefore the personality, of the chair are up the buyer. The arms of the chair rise from beneath the seat, curving gently upwards and giving the appearance of a kind of swing. They’re comfortable, lovely, and fit the aesthetic of the chair to a tee. Every detail has been hand–crafted to reflect the very best in office chair look, design, and function. Get art. Buy the Embody today.
