Embody Chair

Please note our In Stock Embody chairs ship fast and free, but they are Ready to Assemble. 

Don't see what you're looking for? Design your perfect Embody Chair here.

Materials: Embody comes in a range of textile colors and a choice of frame and base finishes to allow you to personalize the look of your chair.

Narrow Upper Back Design: Embody’s narrow backrest helps your arms and shoulders move unimpeded so you can move and breathe freely.

Arm Adjustability:

• No Arms: Armless option allows the chair to fit easily under a desk or table, and supports a variety of activities that require freedom of movement.
• Fully Adjustable Arms: Allows you to set the height of the arms from 6.5 inches to 11.5 inches from the seat to minimize shoulder strain. Arms also adjust outward from 12 inches apart to 21 inches to support different types of work: inward for keyboarding, outward for mousing.

Pixelated Seat:  Combines the performance features of suspension seating and the comfort features of foam and fabric, a key differentiator against competing chairs. The Embody seat is comprised of four different support layers—each with its own set of material properties, and each created with a different manufacturing process, all working together, orienting themselves to your shape with a degree of fidelity so high they even accommodate pockets. These layers were designed for airflow, keeping you cool and comfortable as you sit.

Seat Depth: The seat depth can be adjusted from 15 inches to 18 inches and controlled by the front handles on the right and left sides of the seat.

Seat Height: The translucent seat height joystick, located in center of tilt tension knob, can be angled in any direction to activate. Lift weight to raise the seat height; lower the height while seated.

Balanced Recline: Embody’s tilt technology mimics your natural pivot points, lets you “dwell” comfortably in any position, and offers a unique “kicker” that lets you extend even farther back to stretch. The tilt tension is adjusted by turning the tilt tension knob, located at center right side of chair below seat.

Backfit Adjustment: A central spine and flexible ribs align the backrest with your spine’s natural curve, so you achieve a neutral, balanced posture.

Embody Tilt: Embody’s proprietary tilt technology keeps your back at a proper angle to the seat, allowing your body to move naturally into the most healthful seated
postures while keeping your pelvis stable.

Posturefit:  Embody’s PostureFit properly supports the base of your spine and keeps your pelvis tilted forward, preventing slouching and decreasing muscle fatigue while you sit.

Pixelated Back: Unlike any conventional back design, the Embody Pixelated back conforms to your unique spinal curvature, providing targeted support. More along the spine where you need it, and less along the edges to encourage healthy upper body movement.

Casters

• Casters for Carpet: Designed for use on low- to medium-pile carpet, such as commercial or Berber, this 2.5-inch diameter caster has wheels of durable black nylon.
• Casters for Hard Floor or Carpet: A versatile caster that can be used on hard surfaces such as wood, ceramic tile, vinyl tile, or carpeted floors, it is 2.5 inches in diameter and is made of durable black nylon with a soft polyurethane tread. The Soft tread gives the chair better traction and reduces noise on hard surfaces.

PRODUCT DESIGN STORY

The result of decades of painstaking design research
What if a chair could do more than just minimize the negative effects of sitting? That was the radical idea that Jeff Weber and the late Bill Stumpf had in their design studio. Could they design a chair that actually had positive effects on the body? “You can’t design without empathy,” said Weber, who also designed our Caper chair. “Since design has become more technology based, we’ve had to sit in our chairs in front of computers for longer periods, just like everyone else. We identify with the problems people have as a result of sitting.”

Could we build a health-positive chair?
Bill Stumpf, who designed our Aeron, Equa, and Ergon work chairs and worked for Herman Miller for more than three decades, brought the idea to us. Could such a chair be designed and made? Early on, we discussed the idea with the experts, testing three hypotheses: Work chairs can be health-positive or therapeutic, not merely health-neutral.
Dynamic surface pressure on a chair and back will provide more comfort, liveliness, and health-positive benefits than nondynamic surface pressure. Work chairs can let us achieve postural equilibrium (the upright balance point when our eyes are vertically aligned with our hips) naturally, no matter what our spinal curvature.

Testing and research
Expert input on these hypotheses fueled Weber and Stumpf’s early thinking about the chair and formed the basis of experiments designed to establish whether such a chair was possible. But Bill passed away in 2006. Weber carried on. As Embody’s designer, it was he who gave the chair its function and form, building on Bill Stumpf’s inspiration.

Creating a healthy connection
Prototypes followed, with experts sitting in them and offering appraisals of what was good and what wasn’t. Researchers conducted laboratory experiments involving kinematics, preferred postures, pressure distribution, seated tasks, and metabolics. These guided the development of Embody and confirmed the benefits it offers.

DESIGNERS

Bill Stumpf

Bill Stumpf once said, “I work best when I’m pushed to the edge. When I’m at the point where my pride is subdued, where I’m innocent again. Herman Miller knows how to push me that way, mainly because the company still believes—years after D.J. De Pree first told me—that good design isn’t just good business, it’s a moral obligation. Now that's pressure.”

Stumpf’s association with Herman Miller began in 1970 when he joined the staff of the Herman Miller Research Corporation. After establishing his own firm in 1972, Stumpf created the Ergon chair, the first ergonomic work chair. Later, in collaboration with Don Chadwick, he produced the groundbreaking Equa and iconic Aeron chairs. He also was principal designer for the Ethospace system.

“I enjoy myself, and I do it through design,” Stumpf declared in an interview a few years ago. “I love beauty, and I love the availability of beautiful things and useful things immediately around me.”

When he looked around, though, too often he saw design that “denies the human spirit,” architecture that acknowledged money and not people, offices that were “hermetically sealed in artificial space.” He constantly battled against such designed indignity—a battle that began in the 1960s at the University of Wisconsin.

“Everything goes back to those days at the University of Wisconsin,” he said recently, referring to the postgraduate years he spent studying and teaching at the university’s Environmental Design Center. “Everything was about freeing up the body, designing away constraints.”

It was there where Stumpf, working with specialists in orthopedic and vascular medicine, conducted extensive research into ways people sit—and the ways they should sit. In 1974, Herman Miller commissioned him to apply his research to office seating. Two years later, the Ergon chair was introduced.

During his lifetime, Stumpf—a key figure in Herman Miller’s transformation into a research-based, problem-solving innovator—received numerous awards for this work. He was named the winner of the 2006 National Design Award in Product Design, an award presented posthumously by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Stumpf died in 2006.

Jeff Webber

As a kid, Jeff Weber was fascinated by the way things worked. “I was always tinkering—either building things or tearing them apart,” he says. Watching his mechanical talents develop, his grandfather suggested that he consider becoming an industrial designer. Once he learned more, “I never really thought about doing anything else,” recalls Weber.

Today he uses his considerable talents to improve the human condition by designing products that enhance people’s lives—at home and at work. “There should always be a human benefit associated with whatever it is we’re designing,” he explains. “It’s all about the experience, stimulating a person’s senses in a positive or beneficial way.”

While Weber’s work includes a wide spectrum of products, he became interested in furniture design when he teamed up with Bill Stumpf, who worked with Herman Miller for 30 years. “Bill’s design spirit will inspire all my future work,” says Weber. One example is Stumpf’s “uni-part” theory. “It says that all components of any given object must have a functional purpose as well as an aesthetic one,”says Weber. “It’s a fundamental principle we employ every day.”

In the studio, that philosophy means the design of an object, a building, or a service “is the connective tissue between people and the world. The quality of that design really dictates the quality of the user’s experience and thus defines our existence.”

With an emphasis on results, an integral and important aspect in his design process is research. When designing Herman Miller’s Embody chair, for example, Weber and the Herman Miller team spent nearly two years talking with experts in various fields of medicine, from specialists in upper-extremity conditions to optometrists and neurologists. It was all in an effort to gain a real understanding of what it takes “to support a body in space in a healthful way and enable motion at the same time,” he says.

“The human body is a constant source of inspiration for me,” he continues. “Workplace demands and responsibilities may change, but the human element remains relatively the same. My challenge is always, ‘How can I produce something that will actually improve that condition?’ Comfort and health are like love and peace: can we ever have enough?” he ponders.

Weber says the most satisfying part of his work is watching someone enjoying the final outcome of his efforts. “Seeing someone sitting in a chair and appreciating the logic and rationale behind it is very gratifying.”

He says he’s finding this stage of his career to be especially energizing. “I’ve always believed that good design is a blend of art and science,” he says. “To use that combination in ways that positively impact how people live and work is really exciting to me.”

OFFICIAL HERMAN MILLER RETAILER

We're an authorized Herman Miller retailer. This means we're official. We sell new factory-direct items complete with Herman Miller's own 12-year warranty. You can purchase confidently from Office Designs knowing you'll be receiving genuine Herman Miller product.

BRAND STORY

Herman Miller® is a pioneer in the furniture industry, an innovator whose human-centered, problem-solving approach to design has introduced new ways of living and working for over 100 years. Environmentally-friendly design, lean manufacturing, ergonomics, the open office, even American modernism itself: Herman Miller and our designers have had a hand in shaping it all. In the spirit of our founder, D.J. De Pree, who established a willingness to abandon ourselves creatively to the influence of others, we’ve partnered with the world’s leading designers for generations—from midcentury icons George Nelson, Charles and Ray Eames, and Alexander Girard to Michael Anastassiades, Scholten & Baijings, Yves Béhar, and more of today’s leading design minds. Our work with them continues to explore design as a method of change, and the enriching value authenticity brings to our lives. Together, we’re shaping the new kinds of spaces where people will live and work for years to come.

Dimensions & Measurements

• Overall Width: 29.5”
• Back Height: 42” to 45”
• Seat Width: 21.25”
• Seat Height: 16” to 20.5”
• Seat Depth: 15” to 18”

Shipping Information

Visit our Shipping and Delivery page to learn more.

• Packaging Dimensions: 40.5” x 28” x 28.5”
• Package Weight: 63 lbs
• Light Assembly Required: Yes. Seat back needs to be attached to base.

Specifications

Box size is 27" x 28" x 25" and the chair does come partially disassembled. You will need to assemble the back portion of the chair.