These designers offer an alternative to the hegemonic desk-and-chair workplace designs.
The crusade against chair-based lifestyles gained steam in 2011, when doomsday headlines declared sitting a “lethal activity.” Today, the anti-sitting agenda of medical researchers, lifestyle experts, and masochists has made significant gains and spurred efforts to redesign our entire lives so that we may never have to sit again. One group of designers has heralded “the end of sitting” with their redesign of the modern workplace. Amsterdam-based design studio RAAAF paired with artist Barbara Visser to construct a prototype of a chairless office at the Looiersgracht 60 Gallery in Amsterdam. Their vision eschews cubicles, desks, and chairs in favor of sloped surfaces and angled structures that workers are expected to lean against or lie on for support.
“In our society almost the entirety of our surroundings have been designed for sitting, while evidence from medical research suggests that too much sitting has adverse health effects,” the designers said. “The installation’s various affordances solicit visitors to explore different standing positions in an experimental work landscape.”
Is it possible that going to work everyday, 9-to-5, plus overtime on the weekends, could even be more tiresome than it already is? The anti-sitting evangelists say yes.
Photo by Jan Kempenaers
Photo by Jan Kempenaers
Photo by Jan Kempenaers
Photo by Jan Kempenaers
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