Design Story

Research shows that an increasing number of people are doing more work in places other than their individual offices or workstations. Now people often work in spaces that can be used by a variety of people throughout the day. As a result, increasing demands for comfort, space efficiency, and ergonomic support are being placed on the secondary seating used in places like conference, project, training, and multipurpose rooms.

However, chairs often used in these spaces were designed for some other purpose and don't have the required capabilities, including easy mobility, light scale, compact footprint, and simple-to-use adjustments.

To develop a solution for hard-working, multiuse spaces, Herman Miller built on its extensive work chair research base and applied it to secondary seating. The result is Caper chair. It was designed by Jeff Weber, of Stumpf/Weber + Associates, using universal design principles, creating one seating product to accommodate the diversity of people, tasks, and behaviors in a multitude of areas.

Weber says the chair achieves its high level of performance and comfort by "using standard materials in novel ways." It's also delivered with integrity. In keeping with Herman Miller's commitment to environmental responsibility, Caper has a high percentage of post-consumer content and is 100 percent recyclable. And the design requires less energy and material to build and recycle.

The Caper family provides all this at an affordable price. "Too much good design seems expensive," Weber says. "I wanted to break that cliche."