Herman Miller is rebuilding the Aeron chair from the inside out

When Herman Miller launched the Aeron chair in 1994, almost nothing about it made sense. Unlike other chairs of that era, it wasn’t made of leather or full of plush foam. Instead, its frame was exposed, its mesh was transparent, and it cost double what buyers expected to pay for an office chair. “Most ergonomic chairs have misunderstood the human form,” says Don Chadwick, who co-designed the chair with the late Bill Stumpf. Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick in the early 1990s [Photo: courtesy Herman Miller Archives] Some industry observers had doubts about whether the Aeron would succeed. Those skeptics were wrong. More than nine million Aerons have sold since launch. The Aeron quietly became a powerful status symbol over the next two decades. MoMA added the chair to its permanent design collection. And it became the default chair to find desk side at hedge funds, ad agencies, and Silicon Valley startups that were transforming the future of work, thanks to the computer. “Technology had taken over the office environment,” says Chadwick. “Office chairs needed to reflect the needs of comfort and adjustability consistent with the office revolution.” [Photo: Pippa Drummond/courtesy of Herman Miller] The Aeron, by any reasonable measure, does not need improving. But Herman Miller has updated it anyway. This month, the company is rolling out a version of the Aeron that takes the chair apart at the molecular level and rebuilds it around a more sustainable supply chain. Together, these changes are projected to reduce the Aeron’s global average embodied carbon by 12%, on top of years of previous reductions. “The sustainability investments we’ve made in this particular product is like compounding interest,” says Gabe Wing, vice president of sustainability at MillerKnoll, Herman Miller’s parent company. “It keeps adding up over time.” [Photo: Pippa Drummond/courtesy of Herman Miller] Rebuilt at the m