Environment
Documents
Certifications
- GREENGUARD Indoor Air Quality
- GREENGUARD Indoor Air Quality
- MBDC Cradle to Cradle Silver
What's In It For You
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Product Story
All those hours at work, you move, your chair moves, the desk stays put. Even the best task chairs can't do it all, so we've brought ergonomic principles to the one element that was just sitting there. A desk that moves? Radical! A desk that promotes healthful movement? That makes sitting at a computer comfortable? It's Envelop, the first desk designed to help you, your chair, your desk, and computer work together for better health and comfort.
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Crouching Worker, Lots of Neck Pain
Heavy computer use is hard on the body. Sitting in an ergonomic task chair is a big help, but even then, you hunch, you crouch, you lean in toward that glowing screen. Leading to back and neck pain, eyestrain, and fatigue. Because the Envelop desk moves and encourages movement, it lets you take full advantage of an ergonomic task chair and natural body movement.
Envelop allows you, your chair, your desk, and technology to work in concert with one another. Envelop creates a breakthrough level of personal comfort and overall health, thanks to optimal positioning of your computer and a more healthful posture for you. It lets you achieve your most comfortable posture while keeping your eyes on the task.
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Your Eyes Will Always Win
When you're seated at your computer, your body will position itself—and maintain that position, even when it leads to discomfort—so that your eyes focus most easily on the monitor. The result is often postures that aren't healthy or comfortable. Envelop's unique seven-degree tilt keeps technology in the correct ergonomic position, letting you maintain the visual display at the optimal distance (18 to 30 inches) and angle (10 to 25 degrees downward).
As you shift position, your laptop or keyboard, pointing devices, and monitor are positioned synchronously nearer or farther away—without shifting them separately. So your eyes are always focused as they should be while you maintain a healthful, comfortable posture.
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Moving Support
It's called Envelop because the sliding, flexible support surface—the "infield"—envelops you as you work. The infield slides forward seven inches and pivots down seven degrees to provide continuous flexible support for your forearms and wrists. Your forearms rest comfortably on the soft, resilient infield, reducing pressure on them and eliminating awkward wrist positions.
Designed to be used with an ergonomic chair that features a synchronous tilt, Envelop provides ergonomic support through a wide range of seated postures—whatever is most comfortable for you.
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Sophisticated Design
Envelop has been designed to fit in wherever you need it to be—as a freestanding desk at home or in an office, or within a systems environment. Its clean, trim aesthetic works harmoniously into any design.
The desk measures 30 by 45 inches and expands to 37 by 45 inches when fully extended. It sits on two open legs, which are pin height adjustable in 1-inch increments. Available with glides or four locking casters. Total height adjustment range with casters: 5 inches (27 ½ to 32 ½ inches). Total height adjustment range with glides: 6 inches (25 ½ to 31 ½ inches).
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A Good Fit
The body pocket size was designed on the basis of anthropomorphic data so that it fits from the fifth to 98th percentile of women and men.
The Envelop desk is available in a wide variety of laminates, veneers, and finishes.
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Earth-Friendly
Envelop has been designed to meet the rigorous Herman Miller Design for the Environment protocol. Made from 32 percent recycled materials, it is 53 percent recyclable at the end of its useful life.
Design Story
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The late Bill Stumpf and his design partner, Jeff Weber, have been responsible for many of the imaginative leaps that have produced our most innovative solutions. Bill designed the first ergonomic task chair, Ergon, introduced in 1974, and the Aeron chair. Jeff designed the Caper chair. Together, they designed Embody, the first health-positive task chair.
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Embody began with Bill's and Jeff's awareness of an unsolved problem: the lack of physical harmony between us and our computers. They thought of the small universe that encapsulates the office worker—the "envelope"—as consisting of three parts: chair, surface, surround. While working on their radical idea that a chair could do more than just minimize the negative effects of sitting and could actually have positive effects on the seated body, they became acutely aware of the problem of the static surface.
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They wondered why people—even when sitting in the best ergonomic task chairs—still had a tendency to hunch over "like cockroaches," as Bill liked to say. He and Jeff realized that, because the surface has always been disconnected from the chair and the person who sits in it, the different postures the person assumes continuously throughout the day disrupt the relationship between the face plane and the computer plane. The result was neck and shoulder strain and pain.
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As they worked to develop the Embody chair, they began to rethink the whole concept of a desk. Why did it have to just sit there? Why did computer users have to manually move their laptops, keyboards, pointing devices, and monitors around, trying to maintain the right position and angle? Why couldn't a desk do that?
Envelop became Jeff's project, and he was responsible for most of the work that produced the final product. It represents both a great leap forward in ergonomic design and a logical continuation of Bill's and Jeff's ideas about the body in work postures that had been guiding them for years.