CYNARA is equipped with everything that Okamura believes to be the necessary functionality for office seating while at the same time being overwhelmingly light, with only half the mass of a traditional product. It also achieves a 35% reduction in CO2 emissions relative to traditional task chair products. The ultimate in lightness and functionality have been combined beautifully in this top-class item.

CYNARA’s development concept was based on an archer’s bow. It has an extremely simple structure while also being flexible, strong, and light. Its pliability is dynamically incorporated into the office seating’s reclining action. The design was led by Swiss design company b4K’s Andreas Krob and engineer Joachim Brüske and their innovative ideas were realized by Okamura’s planning team.

The key reason to strive for lightness in CYNARA’s design was an investment in the SDGs and ESG that aim to make our society more sustainable. Lightness reduces the energy used for part procurement, distribution, and manufacture, as well as reducing the impact of the product’s final reclamation and recycling process.

The project began with the goal of creating the lightest office seating in the world.

How can something be made super-lightweight whilst still honoring the design and maintaining its strength? The development team wracked their brains over this question. They made prototypes, checked the structure, checked the comfort and smoothness of the reclining motion, and then looked for places to shave off weight. A significant shift in thinking seemed necessary. Andreas Krob and Joachim Brüske came to Japan to work on the strategy together.

They made the seat and backrest into a unified frame and performed strength analyses to cut away any excess parts. After making the seat and backrest into a unified frame, the final key to lightness which they arrived at was a new structure which allowed the seat to partially bend. This development resulted in the structure being more compact and the number of parts fewer, while the comfort was maintained. Stretching mesh across the unified seat and backrest frame directly also contributed to lightening the chair.

The development team was only able to achieve this degree of lightness by immersing themselves in the idea of contributing to a sustainable society.

At Okamura, we have studied ergonomics for many years in an effort to find the ideal form for furniture. In particular, we have put effort into supporting people with better chairs, primarily through advanced reclining mechanisms. If the seat and backrest do not tilt together at the same angle, then a gap will form between the backrest and the person’s back, requiring them to constantly adjust their posture and clothing. If the backs of the knees are raised when changing the angle of the seat, this can lead to poor circulation and tingling in the lower legs. The reclining mechanism we arrived at to solve both those problems was ankle tilt reclining.