It’s an oft-repeated “ism” that good design (supposedly) goes unnoticed. But in 1973, when business partners Andrew Morrison and Bruce Hannah created the Morrison Hannah chair for Knoll, its subtlety of form caused an uproar. With its sleek aluminum frame and plush but unobtrusive cushioning, it offered “ergonomics without ego,” almost 50 years before its time. In the heyday of corporate real-estate, preceding open-plan offices, hierarchical design reigned supreme, “announcing who you were before you even got there,” says Hannah. “So people didn’t accept the chair or like it.”
Some fifty years later, things have changed. “We called it the easy chair because it was easy to make, easy to use, and easy on the eyes,” says Hannah. The sentiment feels especially timely given the ability to work from anywhere today,and, depending on which circles one runs in, to also make doing so look good.
“It creates ergonomic features without screaming, ‘I’m an ergonomic chair,’” says Hannah, who worked closely with the Knoll team to modernize the original design which predated CAD technologies, and advancements in foam and aluminum. “You don’t get this opportunity. Ever. As we redid the chair, we questioned seat angle, back, angle, tilt, how it tilted, where it tilted from,” he says.
One enduring aspect of the Morrison Hannah chair, however, is what it represents in Hannah’s decade-long working rapport with his late design partner. “We worked together for 10 years, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We were going all the time.” It follows, then, that Morrison and Hannah prized objective design standards. They based their pieces, like this chair, on geometries like the ellipse (“Every single part of the chair is an ellipse of one form or another,” says Hannah). Changes were made according to mathematical adjustments and not subjective whim.
And while whims never guided them, whimsy did, on occasion. “I mean, part of me always has been, and part of Andy, I think, was always to bring some sort of joy to the place and to make people smile,” he says. “And I think the chair does make you smile a little bit.”
