Herman Miller, in its over 100 years of existence, has apparently never produced nesting chairs before. We’re not entirely sure why, but it could be that the nesting form factor tends to produce pieces that are more utilitarian than elegant. That changes this year with the Herman Miller Fuld.
Yes, Herman Miller finally made a nesting chair and it looks a heck of a lot cleaner than your typical folding chair, making it a great fit for offices, venues, and even residential settings. It’s a fun design, too – one that fits nicely in professional settings without looking like your typical office fare.
The Herman Miller Fuld has a pretty unusual design for a nesting chair. Typically, chairs in the category have seats and front legs that fold up neatly, allowing you to lean it flat against the wall or set it down flat on the ground. With this chair, only the seat actually folds, so the chair remains upright on its own, with no need to lean it up a wall or lay it down on the ground. It also comes with front and rear legs that are lined up at different positions, allowing multiple chairs with their seats folded up to nest together in a neat row.
The rear legs, arm rests, and backrest are actually made from a single frame, while the front legs and the seat bar are made from another, with the two sections fused together to create the chair. Instead of the traditional X-shape used in nesting chairs, this one produces an inverted Y-shape that, we have to admit, looks pretty sleek. It comes with a full set of casters on each leg, too, so you can easily glide from one cubicle to another, as well as push or pull the chair when putting it away.
The Herman Miller Fuld has rear legs that protrude further than the rest of the chair, so there’s no part any part of the chair hits the wall other than the casters, while the backrest itself has been engineered to offer some amount of flex, so it can adjust based on how you lean on it to ensure comfort. The seat itself is contoured to accommodate human anatomy and comes without padding, although they do offer an optional 3D knit textile to be placed on top to add a touch of class to each chair. Construction is an unspecified polymer for the entire frame and seat.
The chair is designed by Stefan Diez, an award-winning German designer who serves as head of the Industrial Design program at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. He describes it as “a comfortable, compact version of an office chair,” which,, we guess, is appropriate. We’d probably add “visually interesting” to that, since this is one unique-looking piece, especially with how the rear frame flows from the legs to the arms to the backrest.
The Herman Miller Fuld is available in six monochrome finishes, with the 3D knit seat in another six different colors. Price starts at $596.