The Power of Smart Design

Designed for active working, "Capisco" becomes part of your body, following your movements and providing support for comfortable daylong working.

During the working moments, the back of the seat offers adjustable lower-back support while the armrest on the left side can support your elbow when you hold the mirror.

During the relaxation moments, the armrests come in handy for resting your elbows while the back-shift of the seat allows you to stretch your back. (you will wonder why you didn’t have this possibility before…)

The wide foot-base provides comfortable resting surfaces for your feet when you don’t need the pedal and brings your hip into a natural and relaxing position.

Another feature of the "Capisco"- just swing the back of the chair in front of you, this way the armrests provide support for your forearms during delicate precision procedures. Your assistant will find that position very comfortable while holding the aspirator for long moments.


Here are some ergonomic considerations by the designer of the "Capisco" M. Peter Opsvik:

The best body posture is always the next one.

Throughout man’s millions of years on earth, people have led physically varied and active lives. The human body is not intended to stay in one position for great lengths of time. Our bodies are simply not designed for this. This is also true of sitting postures. No sitting position is comfortable for more than five to ten minutes at a stretch.
If we are to continue spending so much of our waking hours in a sitting position, the only solution is to initiate movement and variation in posture, not least when seated.
We often say that the best body posture is always the next one.

" Working chair (for use at the office and at home) should not be static like architecture, nor soft like clothes"


Balance + Foot-control = Movement

Balance

A prerequisite for moving effortlessly is being in balance. If we lean against a wall or a pillar of some sort, we stay still for a few minutes before feeling discomfort and subsequently changing position.
If we, on the other hand, stand freely, maintaining a balance, we move constantly, changing the weight from one foot to the other, pacing to and from, or similar.
Have you ever seen a person stand entirely still in an open area?

Stepping is easiest when we're in balance.

If one is to execute some kind of sports movement, like a jump, the best start is a position where the body is in balance.


FootControlledMovement ™

The importance of the legs and feet to a person's sense of well-being, or the tasks and needs of the legs while we sit has not been an area of particular focus in ergonomics. Ergonomists have been primarily concerned with upper body parts: back, neck, shoulders and arms.

The big movements we make are all mastered by our "pedestrian extremities".

The feet and legs became our main agents of transport - when we walk, run, jump the legs and feet are executing the movements.

Even when we sleep and change position some every 11 minutes or so, it's the legs and feet that do the job. Try turning round in bed without using your legs.

As our feet and legs are used to have main responsibility for moving us in almost all situations, it is, in my opinion, natural to give them the possibility to handle this task also while we sit.

These two criteria for movement, balance and foot-control, are not limited to mobile sitting. When using a sailboard, snowboard or rollerblade, for instance, the user has to have both balance and foot-control, the feet placed along a central axis of the board in such a way as to control the instrument by applying weight to the front or the back of the board. The same goes for skating and skiing, the feet control the instrument and the balance facilitates movement.

On a sailboard, balanced body posture and a foot placed on each side of the board's centre is the key to manoeuvring the board.

When we place the body in the instrument called a chair the weight can be applied to both sides of the instrument's point of balance enables the chair to be controlled and manoeuvred in the same way as the above-mentioned sports instruments.

1. The feet should have the possibility to control movement/tilting
2. The feet should have the possibility to maintain stability in any tilt-angle without mechanically locking the tilt.

For the body to be in balance or near-balance, the point the chair tilts at has to be close to a vertical line extending the body's centre of gravity - that is to say approximately in the centre of the chair's seat.

This means that when the chair tilts back, the seat front tilts up.

The fact that the seat front tilts up and down give the feet good control over the chair's movements and angles.

Foot and blood circulation

Why do we want to move our feet to music?

Is it just to Follow the beat - a kinaesthetic response - or can it be due to the fact that an active footwork gives better blood circulation? The heart pumps blood out - to the body. However, there is no suction-effect, its the muscles' job to press the blood back.

When we've been sitting for a while, which part of the body is it that first gives us a hint that we should move?
Returning to the previously mentioned cinema sitting, it's very often the feet that give us the impulses to move and start hunting for alternative ways of placing them.


Saddle up

"The saddle chair"

Horsemen were perhaps the world’s original long-term sitters.
The rider’s bearing is natural compared with that afforded by a traditional chair. This inspired the "Saddle Chair". The chair invites the user to take up any number of different positions, one of which is to sit backwards using the back support as a chest support.