sayl work chair Yves Béhar task herman miller
SAYL chair
People at their best live unframed, going beyond expectations to surprise and delight us. With SAYL, we set out to design and build a chair family that gives form to that spirit. Inspired by the principles of suspension bridges, the frameless back of the SAYL work chair encourages a full range of movement while the suspension back material keeps you cool—all with an extremely small environmental impact. It is everything a Herman Miller chair should be. At a very attainable price.
Our work with Yves Béhar achieved a breakthrough in seating technology. Support is moulded directly into the 3D Intelligent back material. The suspension material is stretched from the Y-Tower at the back of the chair just as cables are stretched from the towers of a suspension bridge. The tension is greater in the transition areas, from the thoracic to the lumbar areas and between the lumbar area and sacrum. "Hinge points" allow these areas to flex and support the healthy, forward rotation of the pelvis. At the same time, less tension in other parts of the back encourages a full range of seated movement.
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Yves Béhar
Designer
Yves Béhar is a thinker. And one thing he thinks about a lot is the future. You can see it in his designs-from his reflective red-lacquered laptop for Toshiba to his elegant closed-toe Footprints for Birkenstock to his refined Aliph Jawbone Headset for cell phones. "I believe design's purpose is not only to show us the future, but to bring us the future," he states.
The founder of fuseproject ("dedicated to the emotional experience of brands through storytelling"), Béhar has been exploring the design world since his childhood in Switzerland. "In Europe, it is double nature to evaluate objects based on how they work and how they look," he explains.
Béhar grew up in a bicultural home, influenced by his East German mother and Turkish father. "One is functional and modernist and the other, expressive and poetic," he says. "I always try to marry the two in my projects."
For a relatively young designer, he has had a remarkable career. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design, he started out working with high tech Silicon Valley clients such as Apple and Hewlett Packard, eventually gravitating into the sport, apparel, technology and furniture arenas.
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