SILQ

As people begin to work in new ways using mobile technologies, they move throughout the office more frequently and spend less time at a designated space. The challenge was to make a chair that adjusts easily to accommodate a flow of users. The idea behind SILQ came from a sketch for a simple design that required virtually no adjustments, to build a chair that cradles the sitter based on the inputs you give it, not on any mechanical adjustments you have to make.

The initial breakthrough came from studying the properties of carbon fibre and working out how to build a simple system where the material becomes the mechanism—a chair that was more organism than machine. However, because the expense of carbon fibre made it a premium solution, it required a second breakthrough - a patent-pending process and a high-performance polymer that’s a fraction of the cost of carbon fibre and makes the SILQ chair widely available.

SILQ makes it easy to get comfortable quickly - anyone who sits in it is going to be supported and delighted no matter where or how they are working. Its intuitive design means its performance and comfort is unique to each person—height is the only adjustment required. The sleek profile and clean lines of the chair create a canvas for individual expression. A wide variety of material and digital-printing combinations allows interior designers to create virtually limitless bespoke versions for their clients.

In creating SILQ we pushed the boundaries of seating design allowing the material to become the mechanism. While typical task chairs may have hundreds of parts so user can adjust every aspect to support them throughout the day, SILQ is engineered with just 25 parts. Incredibly thin, extremely strong and highly responsive, the material it is made from, the way it is shaped and the way it performs are inseparable. Users don’t have to think about adjustments because the only adjustment for SILQ is its height. The chair itself does the rest. The design process has now become a new development tool, expanding the palette of possibilities by pursuing innovation in materials and manufacture to create breakthrough solutions.