The Difference
Galen Cranz
Suddenly I noticed one man who was remarkably different from all the others.
A friend of mine in England was showing me photographs from the time she had spent teaching English in Upper Volta, Africa. I scanned snapshots of family, individuals, and groups-men, women, and children of average stature, varying in posture in physical development. Suddenly I noticed one man who was remarkably different from all the others.
He stood beautifully, with wide shoulders that were neither pressed back under military tension not rounded forward in a clerical stoop, and his chest was deep. His spine was erect and his head balanced, with no strain apparent in his neck muscles. I exclaimed at the perfection of his physical development. Then I found a second such person. Without knowing anything about my interest in chairs, my friend commented that the two men I had singled out were the only two who had grown up in a village without a missionary schools and its tables and chairs.
Of course, there may have been other differences between these two people and the rest that I will never know,but my friend’s comment served to precipitate my suspicions into a hypothesis. Here was a dramatic sign that the entire scientific paradigm for chair design was misguided. Chair in and of themselves are the problem; not poorly designed chairs.
Excerpt from:
The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design, W.W. Norton, 1998