That’s right, healthy office furniture. It’s here and one of the biggest rages in office furniture in history.
The reason for the emphasis on office furniture that aids in keeping a healthy lifestyle is due to several factors. First being that companies realize that they lose money if you’re in poor health. If you’re missing days at work due to anything that can be attributed to the office environment, then you’re burning money from every direction. Some companies demand employees take part in fitness and healthy diet regimens and the companies that employ these methods swear they pay off.
In America in particular, obesity has run rampant with the majority of Americans being so obese that they have to stop working and get on benefits in order to survive. Add to that the terrible recreational habits of smoking, drinking, drugs, and fast food, and you have a recipe for health related disasters in the making. Lest we not forget the sedentary lifestyle of people. Sitting in front of a television or computer monitor for hours on end makes the body less active and prone to sedentary problems.
So many office workers end up in hospitals and treatment centers that businesses find a good chunk of their time coping with losses in revenue as well as services and products.
Good office furniture should not only perform the function it is designed for such as sitting and interaction, but also to be at today’s levels of health and fitness technical applications. We’ve all heard of or use ergonomically designed tools and furniture and this philosophy and related technologies are now part of the landscape. These applications allow for natural movement of the hands and feet, and especially the back. On of the oldest and most fun interactive pieces of furniture is the good ol’ rocking chair. One needs to expend energy regarding to the movement of the chair thus creating energy being used and keeping the metabolism in shape.
Today’s office furniture based on fitness, calls for design and engineering that makes a user burn up extra calories and keep cardio and circulation active. Just sitting on a new chair won’t cut it, that chair has to be designed so that even at the most rudimentary level of relaxation, there is some form of engineering that makes the user keep their blood circulating, breathing deep and easy and just the right amount of stress that calls for the muscles to be active more.
Some of these new office furniture designs look more like something one would find in a kindergarten class or some fast food restaurant’s recreational section. This is because while designing childrens furniture, designers and engineers realized that the final products were not only safer, as in minimizing falls and stumbles, but they caused the children to expend more energy using the furniture.
These observations were later applied to adult sized furniture that ranges from round inflatable ball shapes to flexible furniture that gives way to weight but also causes the user to fight the flexibility like doing resistance training.
One day soon, we may actually see furniture that are also workout benches allowing for constant small scale exercises that can bring about quite a dramatic look to one’s physique.
Image credit: www.humanscale.com