The Ergonomic Chair.
An inside look into the design process.
The Ergonomic Chair was designed by Mark Samsonovich in January 2022.
A pile of sketchbooks, with varying ideas for visual art and industrial design.
2018. An early sketch for a chair with multiple touch points on the back and side fixtures.
2018. A quickly put together prototype for a chair made from leftover wood. This "skeleton" would have adjustable back supports, with the possibility that different back supports and styles could be added to the "neutral" base design.
A modular art installation by Mark Samsonovich made at the same time as chair prototype. An example of how interests in modularity and hardware design were occurring simultaneously.
The chair was initially modeled in CAD, and continued to see iterations within the software. In this photo, there is a change in the proportions of the chair. It is wider, the cross framing is higher, and the arm rests are lower (too low). There is a search for finding the right aesthetic balance while maintaining functionally correct chair proportions.
2019. Head of Marble becomes a company, the first product is a table. The pandemic hits a few months later. People are working from home en-masse. Often times, people sit at dining tables with plastic-molded ergonomic computer chairs, or add ergonomic pillows to their regular chairs. It becomes obvious that ergonomic seating has mostly been designed for corporate environments, and there aren't any options for chairs that are both ergonomically comfortable and aesthetically aligned for the home.
January 2021. Detailed modeling begins for a zero-plastic, hand-crafted ergonomic chair that would have adjustable back supports.
After 3 weeks and several hundred hours of design work, Mark Samsonovich designs and models every detail of The Ergonomic Chair. Chiropractors are consulted for specifications on ideal lumbar and upper back support. Theoretically, it should be amazingly comfortable.
6 weeks later, the first chair is complete. A local group of independent crafts-people and family-run businesses were enlisted to hand-make the components of the chair in New Jersey. The design and fabrication journey resulted in success. Not only is the chair more beautiful than its renderings, but works exactly as intended, offering the form-fitting comfort it was meant to have.
