Guerilla Ergonomics

Our world wasn't designed to be sat in correctly. That's what I learned in Galen Cranz' graduate course in Body-Conscious Design at UC Berkeley. And unless you have a few $1,000 to invest in proper seating, you're SOL. So I try to get by with something Cranz deemed "guerilla ergonomics" - but I'm taking it to the next level.

Here's the first in what should be a long series on guerilla ergonomics:

This is my friend Emma sitting in front of Ramona's at UC Berkeley. There are a few things wrong with the outside space in front of the Architecture building, Wurster. The big problem in terms of body-conscious design is that there are very few table surfaces. I could maybe understand that the space is meant as a socializing area, but people eat here and people study here. Face it, it's UC Berkeley.

So what ends up happening is that people use their laps as laptop and book surfaces. This does terrible things to the spine and neck as you curl your body down towards your legs in an attempt to get a comfortable reading distance between your lap and your face (about 18 inches for most).

Couple that with deep, deep benches along the walls which force your body into an acute, crumpled posture (one of Cranz' main arguments is that the 90 degree seat is an atrocity) and you have problems.

The chairs that exist outside of Wurster aren't 90 degrees themselves. They're actually more like 120 or 115, with the seat going back. This is all fine and well unless you want to look at something; supporting your neck when you're in a reclined position is a strain that can cause neck pain.

Here I've taken the chairs outside and stacked them reversed, using their reclining angles to create something beneficial: an angled desk. The angle brings the reading material up to better align with Emma's eyes (though this angle is perhaps too slight).

Additionally, the desk forces Emma to sit on the edge of the bench rather than back in it. This allows her to bring her legs down, opening the body and straightening the spine.