Industrial designer Marc Newson is making his first foray into workplace design with the Newson Task Chair. Created for Knoll, “this chair is visually silent and a technological marvel,” shares Benjamin Pardo, Knoll’s former Executive Vice President and Design Director. Newson, who has spread his ingenious creativity to places like Apple, Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Alessi, set out to a redesign the everyday task chair by addressing every component of it in order to create a uniform visual and physical experience.
The Newson Task Chair borrows from architectural principles with its cantilevered shape. The seat floats off the chair’s continuous profile and offers movement to the user. Similarly, the Honeycomb Back, which is made with a flexible nylon frame and rubberized, thermoplastic elastomeric skin, allows the user to experience small incremental bouncing to wider, flexing movements, all the way to a gravity-defying deep recline. With its soft rounded shape, the Newson chair looks inviting and comfortable next to the hard lines of the office environment.
The chair is adjusted to preference with the T1 Control spring system, which has been oriented vertical to leave the underside of the seat open and light. The mechanism gives the user control over the tension and dwell experience. To give the chair its uniform, monochromatic profile, ten different materials have been custom color matched with precision, so that one component of the chair seamlessly blends into its adjacent parts. The level of refinement and attention to detail is what sets Newson – both designer and chair – apart from others.
Made to be custom tailored for any office interior style, the Newson Task Chair will be available in four different colorways and three base options very soon via knoll.com.