Six years ago, Downtown Design exhibitor Wilkhahn launched its revolutionary ON chair, which applied kinematic principles to stimulate the body's core muscle groups and joints while seated at a desk.

The company's new IN chair offers a more compact and affordable alternative that uses technologies pioneered by the automotive and sportswear industries to intuitively integrate regular motion into the working day.

You only need to spend a few minutes talking to someone from Wilkhahn to learn some disturbing facts about the long-term damage that spending too much time in an unsuitable office chair can cause to our bodies. It’s a subject that’s been picked up by the media, but which the manufacturer has known about for a lot longer – over a decade ago, the company conducted research, in close collaboration with health experts and sports scientists, that identified the importance of movement to our physical and psychological well-being, and which led to the development of a groundbreaking concept that encourages motion in three dimensions while seated.

According to Dr Jochen Hahne, President of Wilkhahn, the research findings showed that posture-oriented ergonomic principles were outdated and a new direction for office furniture design was required. ‘Our conclusion and challenge became to teach seating how to walk, in order to bring back more physical activity into office work,’ he says, referring to the resulting Trimension dynamic seating concept, which was applied in the ON chair and engages the similar muscles and movements used when walking. ‘This concept, with its natural three-dimensional movements, stimulates and activates the whole human organism, helping people to feel and work better.’

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Source: Architonic