Erwan Bouroullec is a designers’ designer, with an impressive roster of clients and work in museums. It’s no surprise, then, that his latest project should be a new task chair for Vitra, whose 50 year-old Vitramat is still a classic. Bouroullec’s Mynt builds on Vitra’s circular design ambitions, embracing ‘collective’ as well as personal ergonomics. OnOffice visited him at his Paris atelier to learn more
Chairs have embraced motion for centuries – it was Charles Darwin who first put wheels on his wooden armchair so he could manoeuvre better around his studio. But the modern office chair largely emerged in the 1970s, fusing movement with comfort in the name of ergonomics. From the 1950s, studies began to show a correlation between sedentary work and bad health which, combined with strengthening research, workers’ rights and wellbeing movements, has resulted in task chairs evolving towards increasing ergonomic elasticity. Vitra’s pioneering Vitramat chair (1976) introduced a synchronised mechanism that simultaneously integrated the movement of the backrest and the seat. Now, after many evolutions, Erwan Bouroullec’s Mynt embraces intuitive movement and the most minimal mechanism yet. Unlike its predecessors, Mynt is ‘unsynchronised’: the seat moves independently of the backrest, keeping the body in a state of ‘active balance’, which Bouroullec compares to ‘surfing’.
The chair tilts forwards and backwards on key pivot points rather than springs, and is automatically activated by body weight – with no adjustments, other than height, needed. We’ve all experienced that separation of mind and body as we emerge from a period of focus to uncomfortably recalibrate a hunched back, dead leg or stiff neck. “Sometimes our brain forgets to control our body and allow it the natural freedom it wants,” says Bouroullec. “There is a monkey inside all of us who needs to move and jump to relieve pressure on the body.”
As well as the ‘personal ergonomic’, Mynt gives equal attention to the ‘collective ergonomic’ – the quality of a space and the movement and experiences that happen within it. Hybrid work requires chairs that are more “open-minded and easy-going”, explains Bouroullec. Mynt’s streamlined design expresses a “respectful elegance” that Bouroullec argues can quell the intensity of decision making and problem-solving at work, and allow us to think and create more clearly. In doing this, Mynt moves away from being an identifiable task chair. “The language of the ‘hyper-ergonomic’ has its limits,” says the designer. “It can become too clustered into the world of work.” With workplaces becoming more like domestic and social spaces, a wood veneer seat and backrest were introduced for the first time in Vitra task chairs, offering more warmth and character – far more appropriate for the other sizable portion of the hybrid scenario, home offices.
longevity,” says Bouroullec. Mynt honours the legacy of Vitramat while embracing new ideas of today: the consideration of movement beyond the chair; the positive impact of a congenial, aesthetic atmosphere; and the reduction of its footprint on the environment. What would Darwin think of the way we often work – our minds leaving our bodies behind to unconsciously stretch and flex? Perhaps we’ve already reached ‘peak task chair of late capitalism’. Mynt just might be the start of a new trajectory.
