Soma Sofa

Last year I took a graduate course in Architecture called "Body-Conscious Design" which transformed my view of furniture design. Taught by Galen Cranz, the course explored the relationship between the body, design, and architecture and, while dismantling attitudes towards furniture design old and new, promoted the tenets of a design and lifestyle movement called "somatics." "Somatics," like the ergonomics that it seeks to refine and broaden, is of greek origin. Where "ergonomics" is the study of work, and thus our Aeron chairs and OXO brand items are confined to work-related activities, "somatics," meaning "of the body," offers the opportunity to take the kind of body-conscious thought of ergonomic design and extend it into the rest of our lives.
     So, somatics can involve work-related activities--it can discuss the proper table heights for different kinds of work--or it can be used to help with body movement and pain--the Alexander technique, for example, teaches people how to use their bodies, spines, and necks properly to prevent the pain that plagues most of western society. More to the point, somatics advocates can talk about how to sit, as my teacher Galen Cranz did in her book The Chair and continues to do so in her teaching. My newest design, the Soma Sofa, seeks to embody the somatic principles of The Chair and the course "Body-Conscious Design." It is my response to somatics, ergonomics, the failure of traditional furniture to provide comfort, and the failure of body-conscious furniture to penetrate the average consumer's living room.

Design
As I planned this project, I began seeing this particular loveseat in my parents' house as my benchmark. The loveseat is a terrible thing. It forces you to either sit upright at 90 degrees, or squish into an awkward laying position. Because there is zero head or neck support, the simple act of looking straight ahead, to a television perhaps, becomes strenuous. Your back curls into a C shape which, over decades, leads to humps and slipped discs and, in the short term, produces lower back pain. If you spend any time in the seat at all, blood will pool in your legs, increasing your risk of deadly clots. Sitting kills. 
     The Soma Sofa responds to the evils (yes, evils) of the loveseat in creating a lounging space for two individuals that performs nearly every function of the sofa while being more comfortable and less deadly. And though the Soma Sofa appears large, it is actually slightly smaller than a conventional loveseat.
     I want to start by talking about the mechanics of the Soma Sofa, or more precisely, the human body on the Soma Sofa.

The angle between the back and seat cushioning is 135 degrees, midway between sitting and standing. In the diagram from The Chair below, note how the lower back muscles perform nearly all of the work supporting the spine in the traditional 90 degree seat. Standing, muscle work is distributed between the lower back, the butt, and the legs, and at 135 degrees, perching, we get much the same distribution as standing. This perching position is an ideal rest position. Try this if you're interested: lay on your back on the ground and feel your lower body muscles. Laying completely flat, you should still feel strain in your lower back. Easing this into the perching position relaxes those muscles.

From Galen Cranz' book, The Chair

     What's more, laying as you do in the Soma Sofa evenly distributes the force of gravity on the body. This means a few things: you won't fatigue your body and you won't fatigue the Soma Sofa. Traditional couches tend to collapse overtime as the force of most of your weight in one spot (coming from your butt), compresses the foam or stuffing. Distributed evenly over a larger area, your body is more like a snow shoe, and has less impact on the furniture, making it possible to create lighter, longer lasting pieces.

     
You'll notice too one of the stranger features of the cushion in the back pad: butt space. This is a key aspect of the Soma Sofa. As I noted before, laying flat tends to cause stress in the lower back muscles. Part of the reason is because your butt sticks out and forces your lower back in. Any body-conscious seat design must account for our asses.
     Usually, however, you only find butt space in ergonomic design. Ergonomic design, as I've said, is usually the domain of office and workspace designers. I see my potential contribution to body-conscious design as an interest in bringing the observations, science, and philosophy of ergonomics and somatics to home furniture like the sofa and the dining table chair. If ergonomic and somatic principles really will help us live more body-conscious lives, they have to be incorporated into every aspect of our lives. 
     I acknowledge that the ergonomic and somatic aspects of the Soma Sofa are not original. I am deeply indebted to my teachers and the designs of the past - such as Le Corbusier's chaise, an icon of modernism that shares the Soma's 135 degree back-seat angle. This is even where I drew the idea of requiring a separate pillow for neck support. An early choice for a name in fact was the Corbusideux, punning on the fact that my chaise is very similar to Corbusier's save that it seats two.

Aesthetics
Corbusier's chaise has some aesthetic baggage that I didn't want to bring into my own design. Could you see the Corbusier in your home? It's so cold and uninviting (yet incredibly comfortable) that it seems at worst seating in a chic dentist's offices and at best the unused show furniture in the office of a wasteful executive. Modernism's heyday is over, and we need furniture not just for the super rich, but for everyone.
     That's what I thought as I worked out the visual elements of the Soma Sofa. Though the design is inherently based on stark, Modernist angles, the "Blue Moon" upholstery counters it, and the big black buttons take the Soma to a kinder, perhaps even feminine, place while breaking up the monotony of the big flat cushion.

     Don't get me wrong, Modernism's industrial look has given us great designs, new and old. Apple's designs are Modernism incarnate, and truly beautiful. So in rounding the edges of the poplar frame, I mimicked the radius of the iPhone 4 curves.

Wooden dowels hide the construction.

Usability


Tests on my friends and family have all gone very well: the Soma is comfortable beyond a doubt. It successfully captures the somatic principles I began with. But the bigger question that more tests may begin to answer is how usable is it in a living room environment. Can you do the things that you normally do on a sofa on the Soma Sofa?

Listening to Music and Thinking

If this lounge has ideal usage, it is as a thinking and listening device. Without the body strain of a loveseat or sofa, you can listen to music or walk through things in your head until your heart's content.

Watching Television

Television too, is better enjoyed on the Soma Sofa. I initially worried that, with your head back 67.5 degrees, you wouldn't be able to see the television. But a neck pillow, which is a necessary part of the Soma Sofa, resolves this and leaves your resting eye position--between 15 and 30 degrees down from horizontal--level with the ground and perfect for a television set at modest height. People often complain of eye and neck strain watching movies at the theater or in their homes. The Soma Sofa's reconfigured angles seem to resolve these issues.

Reading

The only big problems are reading and playing handheld games. The reclined posture forces you to hold books up to your eyes without support. Unless you use a music stand or some other supporting piece of equipment, you won't be able to read for very long without getting tired.
     As of writing this, there are few options for reading/music stands that seem ideal. But this is only the beginning of the beginning. If more designers apply somatic principles to home furniture, the body-conscious consumer will have an entire ecosystem of tools for sitting and moving and doing to support them properly. But for that, we'll have to wait.