Berlin-based Designstudio 7.5 has developed the “Cosm” office chair for US office specialists Herman Miller – and the newcomer is fast becoming a world hit. It would not be the first once for Carola Zwick, Roland Zwick and Burkhard Schmitz. An interview
Fabian Peters: Over the last two decades you have designed four highly successful office chair models for Herman Miller. How did the collaboration come about?
Carola Zwick: It all started with a phone call. It was in the period just after the Wal came down and we had finally managed to get a phoneline for our office. That was a real challenge back then. And when I heard who was ringing, I initially thought it must be a prank.
Burkhard Schmitz: Herman Miller invited us to take part in a European competition for a desk-screen system, meaning a vanity screen. We were, to put it mildly, surprised, as we admired Herman Miller for the fact that they didn’t develop individual items of furniture, but systems, such as the legendary “Action Office”. We eventually decided to submit a system, and a big fat book to accompany it, in which we tried to explain the cultural and architectural differences between the USA and Europe. And why the “Action Office” was not a success in Europe.
And you promptly won the competition?
Burkhard Schmitz: We of course didn’t get the job. But we did attract their attention. And at some point, Herman Miller then wanted to work with us, on a chair project, which culminated in “Mirra 1”. Our task at the time was pretty much a Mission Impossible. For the chair was meant to be able to do just about as much as the extremely successful “Aeron” chair but be 20 percent cheaper.
Carola Zwick: At the beginning of the collaboration there was quite a cultural clash. We presented a seating cushion to the project managers – we wanted to use it to simulate the kind of sitting experience we had in mind. They, however, had expected a presentation with a scale model or at least a rendering of what we thought the future chair would look like.
Evidently, both sides somehow found a way to move things forward after all?
Burkhard Schmitz: In the final instance, the project was a huge success. Over one and a half million “Mirra 1” units have since been sold. And we were suddenly the first non-American designers to have come up with a commercially successful office chair for Herman Miller. However, we then swore to ourselves never to go about something that way again. Because the estimated two years’ development period had turned into five.
Roland Zwick: When developing a product, we repeatedly undertake so-called explorations. They allow you to go off in different directions, and if you land up in a dead-end you simply turn around. Herman Miller is a kind of supertanker that attempted to follow us when we developed “Mirra 1”. That invariably got nowhere. Fortunately, at some point Bill Stumpf, who designed the “Aeron”, sat down on one of our prototypes, rolled back and forth, and said: “That’s like driving your Jaguar out of the carport.” That accolade probably saved us at that point from being thrown out.