Denn Chair

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  • 2022

  • Product
    Furniture and Lighting

Designed By:

Commissioned By:

Zenith

Designed In:

New Zealand

How, where and why we work has changed and Denn is the first task chair to seamlessly support this new workplace. Denn’s calm, residential aesthetic inspires confidence, its motion allows the individual and the team to thrive and environmentally it is a complete, market leading solution.


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  • CHALLENGE
  • SOLUTION
  • IMPACT
  • MORE
  • The opportunities identified for Denn are a direct result of extensive video observation, expert and user interviews and white paper research. The new workplace is a multi-space, multi-person, and multi-activity ecosystem. It is the office, the home, or the local café. It is a place where both collaboration flourishes and the individual focuses. The new workplace has a stronger residential aesthetic allowing people to perform unhindered by the built environment. In all environments, people have become acutely aware of their health and wellbeing. Products must offer a genuine holistic environmental solution that is considered through its entire life cycle.

  • Denn is a fully featured task chair designed for the new workplace. Denn encourages movement for health, for the individual and for collaboration through its patent pending mechanism. Its weight compensating rock and recline system automatically adjusts to a user’s weight and provides unparalleled comfort. Aesthetically Denn has been reduced to give a calm, residential feel while maintaining a unique innovative character through using layering and transparency. Denn uses environmentally considered material, sparingly. Denn is made from ocean, post-consumer and industrial waste and uses as little as possible to pass the most rigorous global safety and durability standards.

  • Denn innovates functionally, environmentally, and aesthetically to provide a solution which is advantageous for business, end users and the planet. Denn’s innovative performance supports the user to perform better, in a healthier way. Denn’s patent pending mechanism and 4D arm are at the core of the innovation and deliver a new motion enabling the individual or the team to thrive. Denn is a positive environmental solution through being upcycled from low grade waste plastic to high value furniture. Denn is predominantly made from consumer and ocean waste with 95% of the plastic used being upcycled waste.

  • Denn is the outcome of hundreds of hours of research, countless full-scale aesthetic and functional prototypes and constant user trialling. Denn’s video observation showed people spend 49% of their time sitting forward in their seats without contacting the back. Denn supports this posture through the seat and back tilting 8 degrees forward, minimising under thigh pressure and maintaining back support. While providing great comfort and support in upright postures, Denn also rocks to support user’s constant micro adjustments and aid in “fidget to focus” which helps offload cognitive overload through movement. Combined with 12 degrees of recline Denn offers an unparalleled motion which is automated to the user’s weight and seamless moves form one state to the next. Denn’s research identified that while collaborating people often cross their legs or put their hands in their laps due to feeling overly exposed. This feeling diminishes their ability to fully add to the collaboration and decrease their value. Denn’s 4D arms offers 45 degrees of inward rotation allow the user to draw the arm over their lap, giving a feeling of comfort and security. Denn’s 4D arm is patent pending and the motion is additional to the BIFMA requirement for arm adjustability.