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Most people are not impressed by unresponsive objects; they expect the furniture they love to love them back. (Illustration: Melinda Beck) |
| In search of a heightened, more intimate exchange that goes beyond
the pseudo-sensory realm of mechanized massage. Designers love chairs. And the ones they love the most are those paragons of refinement that, like Greta Garbo, can stand alone and make people circle about in admiration. Circle, but not sit. Most people, however, are not impressed by unresponsive objects; they expect the furniture they love to love them back. They want chairs with warmth, comfort, longevity, and, increasingly, a pulsating lumbar massage. The Sharper Image stores are full of people shopping for a complex but affordably sensual relationship with a piece of $1,500 furniture--or, at least, with a $150 gadget--that simulates the work of human hands. They try out massage wands, rhythmic footpads, and vibrating armchairs meant for the privacy of home. Giddy strangers hover and shudder, reacting as others cop their anatomical kicks in public: "Ooh, that's weird!" they say, cranking the "shiatsu" dial to HIGH. One curious chair promises to "relieve stress with a neck massage." Two knobby devices built into the headrest that look like golf balls stuffed into a bag feel like that too, once you sit down and fit your neck into their clutches. Even after you've gotten up, the mechanical fists still perform their pseudo-organic motions, grinding away on no recipient whatsoever. Round and round they go, oblivious to the absence. As it turns out, watching the hypnotic spectacle of those futile gyrations is relaxing. Homely and incompetent as it is, the mechanical neck-kneading lounger may not relieve stress, but its fingerless sign language does gesticulate an interesting challenge for designers: Why shouldn't furniture engage us? Alas, why can't the chairs we love love us back in new and tastefully sublime ways that mesmerize rather than simulate? Designers might begin by studying the competition: the performing furniture consumers adore. Most designers disdain the Barcalounger that unwinds, at the touch of a little lever, from an upright armchair--all prim and decorous--into a languorous horizontality. They especially hate those instant ottomans that spring from sectional sofas. And they deplore all humming furniture--from the push-button recliners in luxury sedans to the motorized mattress that bends into a TV lounge. What can designers offer that the inventors of all this "love furniture" cannot? A lighter touch. A gentle dose of any of the elements that characterizes all good design--suspense, ambiguity, surprise--prepared for one or more of the senses. The Aeron chair, made by Herman Miller, designed by Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, is a good start. Compared to other costly, highly engineered office chairs, the Aeron, introduced in 1995, is strangely responsive. Certainly the mechanical tilt and hydraulic lift hardware allow mobility, but it's the seat material--a girdle-like, elastic fabric meant to replace conventional padding and upholstery--that gives Aeron its "give." Time after time, the simple act of lowering yourself into the chair yields a physical surprise: a sensually relenting resistance that feels better than it should. In fact, the seat feels like a lap--taut but soft. It was in the 1970s, a time when orthodox managers sought office furniture as ugly and corrective as orthopedic shoes, that environmental psychologists advanced a new theory: The bodily romancing of employees--including mere clericals--would boost productivity. In response, Herman Miller dignified the idea of loving furniture, pioneering strategically curved, proportioned, and voluptuously padded office chairs. The bicycle industry invents new anatomical aids all the time: saddles, gloves, and shorts sport fleshy bladders of gel for bump-absorbing comfort. And makers of ski wear are now incorporating chemical and electrical devices that generate warmth. Furniture, too, could perform all sorts of nice maneuvers on us--warm us in winter, cool us in summer, and so on. But perhaps it's not function at all but wanton displays of energy--those that toy with sensory thresholds--that might prove the most rewarding. Instead of using furniture to heat bodies, why not use bodies to heat furniture, then use the accumulated energy to some arbitrary and aesthetic end? (Anyone who doubts the satisfaction derived from altering inanimate objects need only try out their latent desire on a self-testing battery. Press the two dots and watch the yellow line elongate. Yes, it is empowering.) If you notice the way partyers heat up a small room, you'll also observe how communal heat, in turn, fuels a mood--gemütlichkeit. Restaurant noise works the same way; people react to other people reacting. So why not design a sofa that transforms collective body heat into some display of electrical energy revealed slowly, over the course of an evening, for no purpose other than enhancing the ambiance? The current might lower the lights, alter the bass on the sub-woofers, or change the CD. The strokefest at the Sharper Image answers an old question while it poses a new one: No, chairs cannot yet perform relaxing massages. But someday we might indulge in even sweeter sensory realms: a reciprocity between ourselves and our equipment. Call it mutual animation. |
Keywords:
responsive furniture, chair, massage, Barbara Flanagan, reciprocity