Beauty, elegance, respect
We asked designer Yves Béhar to design a highly accessible chair that would embody everything Herman Miller is known for: beautiful design, world-class ergonomics, elegant engineering, and respect for the environment.
A suspension chair
Béhar, who lives in San Francisco, began by seeking designs that offered more for less. And then he took a look at his city’s most famous landmark: the Golden Gate Bridge. Béhar wondered if the engineering principles of a suspension bridge could be applied to a chair.
The idea of using a suspension bridge to support a frameless suspension backrest meant that the elastomeric material could be stretched in a way that would provide the greatest tension at points where support is needed and less resistance in other areas, allowing for a wider range of movement.
Something unique
So why “Sayl” instead of, say, “Bridge”? Take a look at the chair from the side. See the resemblance to a sailboat’s sail? The name refers to the sailboats that pass beneath bridges and inspired the original design. Replacing the “i” in the word “sail” with a “y” was a nod to the chair’s innovative Y-shaped tower structure.
“It is not defined by boundaries.”
“Yves Béhar”
