The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body, and Design
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.95 (691 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393046559 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
This work offers a new perspective on one of the most common cultural artefacts, the chair, explaining the history, physiology and politics of how and why we sit the way we do. Tracing the history of the chair as we know it from its crudest beginnings in the Neolithic Age to its place in the modern ergonomic office, Galen Cranz uses anecdotes, literary references and famous designs to document our ongoing love affair with the chair - despite its potentially harmful effects on our bodies. The chair, ever-present in out habitat, forcefully shapes the social and physical dimensions of our lives. Part social history and part manifesto for a new way of living, this book brings a critical eye to the place where we spend most of out waking lives.. Cranz reveals how the chair's evolution in Western society has been governed not by a quest for comfort or practicality but by the designation of status
A fascinating challenge to anyone who sits Jerry Sontag (Sontag@mtpress.com) There are certain subjects that do not seem to lend themselves to serious or interesting scrutiny. I would have said the history of the chair, and its place in society, would have been one of those subjects until reading Professor (and Alexander Teacher) Galen Cranz's new book, The Chair: Rethinking Culture, Body and Design.Professor Cranz takes a look at the history of chairs, their place establishing hierarchical relationships among people, and the various design attempts artists and architects have made at creating chairs. Cranz makes clear in her book that in chair design often the "e. B. Richards said More ergo than chair. Purchase it believing there would be a history of the chair and its development through the ages.Very little on the history. The main body of the book deals with ergonomics and future design with very ametuerdrawings.. "Consumer, business, designers, engineers" according to Mark Kmicikiewicz (cke.mark@sympatico.ca). We read the book with great pleasure and interest, we recommend it to everybody - who may occasionally make use of the chair! Cranz had courage to address the very serious situation, especially with growing tendency to a more and more static work places (i.e. computers, but not only). The cost to the society, for wrong (and totally misunderstood by public) approach to the sitting - is colossal ("In 1978 an estimated $ 1Consumer, business, designers, engineers Mark Kmicikiewicz (cke.mark@sympatico.ca) We read the book with great pleasure and interest, we recommend it to everybody - who may occasionally make use of the chair! Cranz had courage to address the very serious situation, especially with growing tendency to a more and more static work places (i.e. computers, but not only). The cost to the society, for wrong (and totally misunderstood by public) approach to the sitting - is colossal ("In 1978 an estimated $ 14 billion were spent for the treatment of Low Back Pain [LBL] in the United States"). This book, in our view, is an excellent guide for general public, which deserve an ind. billion were spent for the treatment of Low Back Pain [LBL] in the United States"). This book, in our view, is an excellent guide for general public, which deserve an ind
Office seating uses shape, fabric and size to make clear which chair belongs to the boss. 85 photographs and illustrations. From Publishers Weekly The oldest surviving chair comes from the tomb of King Tut. "Sitting is hard work," Cranz's research reveals; seatmakers should, she says, abandon the common principle of lower-back support; the Alexander Technique of somatic therapy holds lessons for furniture designers; "human beings are not designed to hold any single posture for long periods"; garden-variety office furniture is bad for you; and the famous chairs of Modernism are, in general, even worse. Cranz's clear book—half survey, half polemic—may successively delight, instruct and alarm professors in their endowed chairs, designers at their slanted tables, drivers in drivers' seats, parents with ca