Herman Miller Aeron Chair

Herman Miller's Aeron has been the default serious office chair since the late 1990s. Still looking contemporary 25 years later, the original design anticipated the way people actually sit at desks better than almost anything since. The mesh material was unusual when it launched because every other high-end chair used foam cushioning. Choosing a woven pellicle instead turned out to solve the overheating problem that makes long sitting sessions uncomfortable. The adjustment mechanisms are extensive but not immediately obvious. There are controls for seat height, tilt tension, tilt range, armrest height, armrest angle, armrest depth. Lumbar support, and it took me about 20 minutes with the manual to configure them all correctly. Once dialed in though, the chair disappears in the way that good tools should, where you stop noticing it because nothing is wrong. A 12-year warranty signals that Herman Miller expects the chair to last. The active secondhand market confirms that it does, with used Aerons selling for $400 to $600 compared to the $1,400 retail price. My interest in this chair is partly about the object and partly about the category it created. Before the Aeron, office chairs were either cheap and disposable or expensive and traditional, with leather and wood signaling prestige rather than ergonomics. The Aeron proved that an office chair could be a piece of industrial design rather than just office furniture. Every mesh-back task chair from Steelcase, Haworth, and Autonomous that followed is responding to the benchmark it set.