New Dimensions In Furniture Design

CHICAGO - As the office furniture industry converges on the NeoCon trade show this week, a topic of keen discussion will be how to make products ergonomically suitable for a work force that today literally comes in all shapes and sizes.

"Twenty years ago we had people working in offices, but the complexion and the makeup of that population has changed," said Bud Klipa, president of Details, Steelcase Inc.'s Grand Rapids-based ergonomics brand. "There are more women, more minorities, in a work force that is aging and increasingly sedentary."

On a global perspective, Holland-based Haworth Inc. is one of several companies carefully eyeing how to adapt its products for use in Asia, where it has made substantial investments in India and China. As the difference between, say, a U.S. male and an Indian female might be nearly 200 pounds and two feet in height, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, for a product such as Haworth's Zody chair to work for both extremes.

In the domestic market, where the average American's weight has climbed nearly a pound a year since 1960, the disparity between body types is no less distinct, albeit more in width than height.

Until recently, the majority of industrial and apparel designers created product for the U.S. market based on a set of human dimensions that came from a 1988 study of U.S. Army personnel. In the study, the difference in weight between a 5thpercentile female, defined as a female lighter than 95 percent of the female population, and that of a 95th percentile male, heavier than 95 percent of males, was roughly 110 pounds. The difference in hip breadth, or seat size, between these outliers was four inches.

Recently, the results of the Civilian American and European Surface Anthropometry Resource Project were released to the general public. A partner of government, automotive, aerospace and apparel interests, the five-year, $6 million CAESAR project was the most comprehensive study of civilian human dimensions ever conducted. Following a decade of studies that showed an increase in U.S. obesity, the results came as no surprise to researchers.

"We knew people were getting larger," said Bill Dowell, director of research for Herman Miller Inc., the lone furniture company to participate in...