When I was five years old I fell in love with airplanes. Now I'm talking about the '30s. In the '30s an airplane had two wings and a round motor, and was always flown by a guy who looked like Cary Grant. He had high leather boots, jodhpurs, an old leather jacket, a wonderful helmet and those marvelous goggles -- and, inevitably, a white scarf, to flow in the wind. He'd always walk up to his airplane in a kind of saunter, devil-may-care saunter, flick the cigarette away, grab the girl waiting here, give her a kiss. (Laughter) And then mount his airplane, maybe for the last time. Of course I always wondered what would happen if he'd kissed the airplane first. (Laughter)
當我五歲的時候 就愛上了飛機 我指的是30年代的飛機 30年代的飛機有兩個翅膀 和一具圓型馬達 而且駕駛者永遠是 長得像Cary Grant的傢伙 他穿著雙長皮靴 馬褲和老舊的皮夾克 帥氣的安全帽 還有迷人的太陽眼鏡 當然還要有條白領巾 隨風飄揚 他走向飛機的樣子 看來那樣地悠哉 一種漫不經心的悠哉 把菸輕輕彈開 一把抱住在那等待的女孩,吻她一下 (笑聲) 然後爬上他的飛機 或許是最後一次了... 當然我每次都忍不住會想 如果他先親飛機會怎麼樣。 (笑聲)
But this was real romance to me. Everything about flying in those years, which was -- you have to stop and think for a moment -- was probably the most advanced technological thing going on at the time. So as a youngster, I tried to get close to this by drawing airplanes, constantly drawing airplanes. It's the way I got a part of this romance. And of course, in a way, when I say romance, I mean in part the aesthetics of that whole situation. I think the word is the holistic experience revolving around a product. The product was that airplane. But it built a romance. Even the parts of the airplane had French names. Ze fuselage, ze empanage, ze nessal. You know, from a romance language. So that it was something that just got into your spirit. It did mine.
但這對我來說是很浪漫的 那幾年關於飛行的東西 都是, --等等我思考一下-- 大概都是當時 最先進的科技產物了. 我當時是個孩子 只想嘗試透過繪畫 來接近這個東西 於是我不斷地畫飛機 這是我 親近這份浪漫的方法 當然,從某個角度來說,我說浪漫, 是指 是指整體的美學 這該說是一種整體的感受 圍繞在一個產品上的感受 那個產品就是飛機. 而它所成就的浪漫 縱使這台飛機 有個法文名字 機身,尾翼。 你知道,這是一門浪漫的語言。 所以這是那些恰恰能成爲你靈魂的事。 它進入了我的(靈魂)。
And I decided I had to get closer than just drawing fantasy airplanes. I wanted to build airplanes. So I built model airplanes. And I found that in doing the model airplanes the appearance drawings were not enough. You couldn't transfer those to the model itself. If you wanted it to fly you had to learn the discipline of flying. You had to learn about aeronautics. You had to learn what made an airplane stay in the air. And of course, as a model in those years, you couldn't control it. So it had to be self-righting, and stay up without crashing. So I had to give up the approach of drawing the fantasy shapes and convert it to technical drawings -- the shape of the wing, the shape of the fuselage and so on -- and build an airplane over these drawings that I knew followed some of the principles of flying. And in so doing, I could produce a model that would fly, stay in the air. And it had, once it was in the air, some of this romance that I was in love with.
然後我決定要更加的接近 那畫筆下幻想中的飛機。 我想要建造飛機。 所以我建了一個飛機模型。 並且在我製造飛機模型的過程中發現 僅憑飛機外觀的繪圖是遠遠不夠的。 我無法把這些 轉換成模型。 如果你想要飛機在天空中飛翔 就必須學會它飛行的 準則。 你必須去學習航空學。 你必須了解飛機是什麽原理使得飛機 能夠停留在天空中。 當然,在那個年代,你無法控制模型。 所以它必須能夠自我調節, 並且保持飛行不墜機。 因此我不得不放棄 這種繪製幻想中機型 的方式, 於是轉而開始繪製技術圖紙, 繪製機翼的形狀,機身的形狀等等。 我在這些 遵循的飛行原理圖紙的基礎下 製作了一架飛機。 在做了這些以後, 我就能夠建起一架能夠在空中飛行的飛機模型。 當它在空中飛行的那一刻, 它就擁有了那些我所鍾愛的浪漫。
Well the act of drawing airplanes led me to, when I had the opportunity to choose a course in school, led me to sign up for aeronautical engineering. And when I was sitting in classes -- in which no one asked me to draw an airplane -- to my surprise. I had to learn mathematics and mechanics and all this sort of thing. I'd wile away my time drawing airplanes in the class. One day a young man looked over my shoulder, he said, "You draw very well. You should be in the art department." And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well for one thing, there are more girls there." (Laughter)
繪製飛機的熱愛 引導著我 當我有機會 在學校選擇一門課 它引導我毫不猶豫地選擇了航空工程 但是當我坐在教室中, 讓我驚訝的是, 竟然沒有人要求我去畫飛機。 我不得不去學習數學和力學 以及一些相關的學科。 我喜歡在課堂上 畫飛機。 有一天一個年輕人繞過我的肩膀看了一看, 他說:“你畫的真好, 你應該去念藝術系的。” 我問:“爲什麽?” 他說:“嗯,有一個原因,那裏女孩子比較多。” (笑聲)
So my romance was temporarily shifted. (Laughter) And I went into art because they appreciated drawing. Studied painting; didn't do very well at that. Went through design, some architecture. Eventually hired myself out as a designer. And for the following 25 years, living in Italy, living in America, I doled out a piece of this romance to anybody who'd pay for it -- this sense, this aesthetic feeling, for the experience revolving around a designed object. And it exists. Any of you who rode the automobiles -- was it yesterday? -- at the track, you know the romance revolving around those high performance cars.
於是我的浪漫暫時的轉移到別的地方。 (笑聲) 我轉到了藝術方面 那裏的人更懂得欣賞畫。 學習繪畫。在那裏並不是很出色。 學習了一些設計, 一些建築。 終於,我成爲了一名設計師。 在之後的25年中, 我生活在義大利, 生活在美國, 我向任何願意為之付錢的人, 發放一點點這種浪漫。 這種感覺,這種美學的感知, 是源于對一個設計產品 的體驗。 它是存在的。 你們之中的任何人在路上開著汽車 是昨天嗎? 當開高性能的車,飛奔在路上時 你就能明白這種浪漫。
Well in 25 years I was mostly putting out pieces of this romance and not getting a lot back in because design on call doesn't always connect you with a circumstance in which you can produce things of this nature. So after 25 years I began to feel as though I was running dry. And I quit. And I started up a very small operation -- went from 40 people to one, in an effort to rediscover my innocence. I wanted to get back where the romance was.
在這25年裏, 我大多是把這種浪漫 一塊塊分發出去 但並沒有從中得到很多收穫 因爲這種設計是即興的 即便能製造出這種自然的本質 並不能完全把人和環境連結起來。 所以,25年後, 我開始意識到我的才思枯竭了。 於是我選擇放棄。 接著我開始經營小型的工作室 從40人 變到只有我一個人的團隊 努力重新發現我的純真。 我想要回到過去 那些原有的浪漫。
And I couldn't choose airplanes because they had gotten sort of unromantic at that point, even though I'd done a lot of airplane work, on the interiors. So I chose furniture. And I chose chairs specifically because I knew something about them. I'd designed a lot of chairs, over the years for tractors and trucks and submarines -- all kinds of things. But not office chairs. So I started doing that. And I found that there were ways to duplicate the same approach that I used to use on the airplane. Only this time, instead of the product being shaped by the wind, it was shaped by the human body. So the discipline was -- as in the airplane you learn a lot about how to deal with the air, for a chair you have to learn a lot about how to deal with the body, and what the body needs, wants, indicates it needs. And that's the way, ultimately after some ups and downs, I ended up designing the chair I'm going to show you.
我無法選擇飛機 因爲在某種意義上 那些東西開始逐漸變得不那麽的浪漫。 即便是我曾經做過很多 與飛機内部設計相關的工作。 所以我選擇了家具這一行。 我刻意的選擇了椅子 因爲我對它們有所了解。 幾年裏,我設計了很多椅子, 給拖拉機和卡車 還有潛艇。 各種各樣的東西。 但不是辦公室的那種。 因此我開始著手與此。 我發現 有許多我運用在飛機上的方法 都是能被複製的。 只是這一次 產品的形狀不是由風來決定, 而是由人體來決定的。 所以準則就是, 就像在飛機中你所學的那樣 如何去應對空氣, 但對於椅子來説 你必須去研究 如何和人體接觸。 包括身體需要什麽, 符合身體的需求。 就是這樣, 再經歷一些波折之後, 我完成了這把我即將呈現給你們的椅子。
I should say one more thing. When I was doing those model airplanes, I did everything. I conceived the kind of airplane. I basically engineered it. I built it. And I flew it. And that's the way I work now. When I started this chair it was not a preconceived notion. Design nowadays, if you mean it, you don't start with styling sketches. I started with a lot of loose ideas, roughly eight or nine years ago. And the loose ideas had something to do with what I knew happened with people in the office, at the work place -- people who worked, and used task seating, a great many of them sitting in front of a computer all day long. And I felt, the one thing they don't need, is a chair that interferes with their main reason for sitting there.
在這裡我要多說一件事, 當我曾經製作那些模型飛機的時候, 我做了所有能做的, 我構思了各種各樣的飛機, 我基本上設計它。 我製造它。 並且讓它飛了起來。 這就是我現在的工作方式。 當我開始設計這把椅子的時候 它並沒有一個先入爲主的概念。 現今的設計,如果你認真來看, 你不會從花俏的構圖開始。 我從異想天開開始。 大約在八九年以前。 這些隨意的想法 在那些辦公室的人身上 開始逐漸成形。 在辦公場所,那些工作的人們 使用電腦椅 很多人坐在電腦面前 一坐就是一整天 我覺得 有一樣東西他們是不需要的 就是一把會干擾他們工作的 椅子。
So I took the approach that the chair should do as much for them as humanly possible or as mechanistically possible so that they didn't have to fuss with it. So my idea was that, instead of sitting down and reaching for a lot of controls, that you would sit on the chair, and it would automatically balance your weight against the force required to recline. Now that may not mean a lot to some of you. But you know most good chairs do recline because it's beneficial to open up this joint between your legs and your upper body for better breathing and better flow. So that if you sit down on my chair, whether you're five feet tall or six foot six, it always deals with your weight and transfers the amount of force required to recline in a way that you don't have to look for something to adjust.
所以我要做這樣一把椅子 能盡可能的幫助他們 盡可能的人性化 或者盡可能的機械化 使得人們不會為它所困擾。 我的想法就是 不是讓人坐下 然後伸手去購各種操縱杆, 而是坐在椅子中 它會自動地根據你的體重調整平衡 對抗 使人傾斜的力。 也許這對在座的大多數的人來說並不具意義。 但是你們知道大多數的好椅子還是會傾斜的 因爲這有助於伸展 你的腿和上身之間的關節 以便能更好的呼吸 還有更好的血液循環。 如果你坐在 我的椅子上, 無論你是五尺高, 還是六尺高, 它永遠可以根據你的體重 轉換成傾斜 所需要的力 這樣你就不需要去尋找 那些用來調整的東西。
I'll tell you right up front, this is a trade off. There are drawbacks to this. One is: you can't accommodate everybody. There are some very light people, some extremely heavy people, maybe people with a lot of bulk up top. They begin to fall off the end of your chart. But the compromise, I felt, was in my favor because most people don't adjust their chairs. They will sit in them forever. I had somebody on the bus out to the racetrack tell me about his sister calling him. He said she had one of the new, better chairs. She said, "Oh I love it." She said, "But it's too high." (Laughter) So he said, "Well I'll come over and look at it." He came over and looked at it. He reached down. He pulled a lever. And the chair sank down. She said, "Oh it's wonderful. How did you do that?" And he showed her the lever. Well, that's typical of a lot of us working in chairs. And why should you get a 20-page manual about how to run a chair? (Laughter) I had one for a wristwatch once. 20 pages.
我現在就告訴你們 這是有得有失的。 這個椅子有些缺點。 其中一點就是 不能適應每一個人。 像是一些體重非常輕的人 或是體重非常重的人。 也許有人上身龐大。 他們就會坐著向下滑落。 但我覺得這種得失 正是我喜歡的 因爲大多數的人不調整他們的椅子。 他們就一直的坐著。 在我去賽車場的公車上我遇見過一個人 他告訴我他的姐姐告訴他。 他說她有了一把新的更好的椅子。 她說:“哦,我喜歡這把椅子。” 她又說:“但是它太高了。” (笑聲) 他接著說:“我們去你那兒看看那把椅子吧。” 他來了看了椅子。 他俯下身,拉了拉操縱桿。然後這椅子就降下去了。 她說:“哦,太棒了。你是怎麽做到的?” 接著他把操縱桿指給她看。 是的,這就是典型的 我們大多數人工作中用的椅子。 爲什麽 要透過看一本20頁的使用手冊 學習如何使用一把椅子。 (笑聲) 我曾經有一只懷錶。它有20頁的說明書。
Anyway, I felt that it was important that you didn't have to make an adjustment in order to get this kind of action. The other thing I felt was that armrests had never really been properly approached from the standpoint of how much of an aid they could be to your work life. But I felt it was too much to ask to have to adjust each individual armrest in order to get it where you wanted. So I spent a long time. I said I worked eight or nine years on it. And each of these things went along sort of in parallel but incrementally were a problem of their own. I worked a long time on figuring out how to move the arms over a much greater arc -- that is up and down -- and make them a lot easier, so that you didn't have to use a button. And so after many trials, many failures, we came up with a very simple arrangement in which we could just move one arm or the other. And they go up easily. And stop where you want. You can put them down, essentially out of the way. No arms at all. Or you can pull them up where you want them. And this was another thing that I felt, while not nearly as romantic as Cary Grant, nevertheless begins to grab a little bit of aesthetic operation, aesthetic performance into a product.
不管怎麽說,我覺得這很重要 當你想要進行這類活動時 不需要去調整它。 另一件事就是 我覺得扶手從來沒有被適當的使用過。 從扶手能給你在工作生活中 給予你多少的幫助 的角度來説。 但我覺得這樣太繁瑣 如果把每個獨立的扶手 調整到你想要的位置。 我因此花費很長的時間。 這就是我剛說的我在這上面花費了八九年。 每一件事情 都在平行的進行著 但它們的本身的問題也隨之增加了。 我花費了很多的時間才解決 扶手如何能更大角度的移動, 像這樣上下的移動, 使之更方便。 所以你不需要去按一個按鈕。 經過了許多次的嘗試與失敗, 我們提出了一個很簡單的改裝 我們僅僅是移動了 其中的一只扶手。 它們就很容易的升起來了。 並且停留在你想要的位置上。 你可以把它們放下來, 事實上根本不需要動手。 或者你能在你需要的時候拉上來。 這是我所感覺到的另一件事。 雖然不像 Cary Grant那樣的浪漫, 然而已經開始 一點點的抓住美感了, 在一個產品裏, 運用美學的表現。
The next area that was of interest to me was the fact that reclining was a very important factor. And the more you can recline, in a way, the better it is. The more the angle between here and here opens up -- and nowadays, with a screen in front of you, you don't want to have your eye drop too far in the recline, so we keep it at more or less the same level -- but you transfer weight off your tailbones. Would everybody put their hand under their bottom and feel their tailbone? (Laughter) You feel that bone under there? (Laughter) Just your own. (Laughter) There's two of them, one on either side. All the weight of your upper torso -- your arms, your head -- goes right down through your back, your spine, into those bones when you sit. And that's a lot of load. Just relieving your arms with armrests takes 20 percent of that load off. Now that, if your spine is not held in a good position, will help bend your spine the wrong way, and so on. So to unload that great weight -- if that indeed exists -- you can recline. When you recline you take away a lot of that load off your bottom end, and transfer it to your back. At the same time, as I say, you open up this joint. And breathability is good.
下一個吸引我的方面, 是傾斜這件事 這是一個很重要的因素。 在某種程度上, 能越傾斜,就越舒服。 這兒和這兒的角度變得更大了, 在你面前成爲一個平面, 你不會想在傾斜時視線下降的太厲害。 所以我們盡可能的保持在同一水平 但這樣你就可以把體重 從尾椎骨上轉移走了。 每個人都能伸手從後面 構到自己的脊椎骨嗎? (笑聲) 你能感覺到下面的那塊骨頭嗎? (笑聲) 只是你自己的。 (笑聲) 它一共有2塊。一邊一塊。 但你坐下的時候,你上半身的所有重量 你的手臂,你的頭, 直接的通過你的後背, 你的脊椎,直到那些骨頭。 這是一個很大的負荷。 僅僅是用扶手來舒緩你的手臂 就能減少20%的總負荷。 現在,如果你的脊椎處在一個不正確的位置, 這會導致你的脊椎錯誤的彎曲,諸如此類。 所以為了卸下 這些巨大的負擔, 如果真的存在的話, 你可以斜倚著。 當你斜倚的時候,能帶走很多的負荷 從底部,轉移到你的背部。 與此同時,就如我所說,你活動了關節。 並且透氣性很好。
But to do that, if you have any amount of recline, it gets to the point where you need a headrest because nearly always, automatically hold your head in a vertical position, see? As I recline, my head says more or less vertical. Well if you're reclined a great deal, you have to use muscle force to hold your head there. So that's where a headrest comes in. Now headrest is a challenge because you want it to adjust enough so that it'll fit, you know, a tall guy and a short girl. So here we are. I've got five inches of adjustment here in order to get the headrest in the right place. But then I knew from experience and looking around in offices where there were chairs with headrests that nobody would ever bother to reach back and turn a knob and adjust the headrest to put it in position. And you need it in a different position when you're upright, then when you're reclined. So I knew that had to be solved, and had to be automatic. So if you watch this chair as I recline, the headrest comes up to meet my neck. Ideally you want to put the head support in the cranial area, right there. So that part of it took a long time to work out.
但為了做到這一點, 如果你有任何的一點傾斜, 就需要在某一點有個靠頭之物 因爲 它會自動地支撐你的頭部 在一個垂直的位置,看見了嗎? 當我傾斜的時候,我的頭會變成和身體垂直。 而且,如果你傾斜的比較厲害, 就必須借用肌肉的力量 去支撐你的頭。 所以這就是爲什麽需要頭枕。 現在頭枕是一個挑戰 因爲你想要去 充分的調節它直至舒服。 你知道,一個高個男孩和一個小巧女孩。 讓我們來看看。 我在這兒留了五英寸的調節空間 以便能為頭找個合適的位置。 但我從經驗中得知 在辦公室中觀察 那些有頭枕的椅子 甚至沒有人願意 伸到背後去扭動把手 調整頭枕到一個合適的位置。 當你從坐直變爲傾斜時 需要換一個位置 所以我意識到這個問題必須解決,必須是自動的。 如果你看看這把椅子 傾斜時,頭枕就出現了 配合我的脖子。 理想的情況下,你希望頭能有一個支撐 在顱骨的區域,就在這兒。 為解決這個問題, 花了不少時間。
And there is a variety of other things: the shape of the cushions, the gel we put. We stole the idea from bicycle seats, and put gel in the cushions and in the armrests to absorb point load -- distributes the loading so you don't get hard spots. You cant hit your elbow on bottom. And I did want to demonstrate the fact that the chair can accommodate people. While you're sitting in it you can adjust it down for the five-footer, or you can adjust it for the six-foot-six guy -- all within the scope of a few simple adjustments. (Applause)
還有其他的種種,例如一點的形狀。 我們使用的凝膠, 我們借用了自行車座椅的構思, 把凝膠放入椅墊中 還有扶手中 用來承受其負重 分擔了這些負荷,這樣你就不會感覺到硬塊了。 你能用手肘 按按鈕。 我想為你們示範一下 這把椅子能配合乘坐者調整的樣子 當你坐在上面時 它能向下調整五英尺 或者你也可以調整它 對於那些六尺高的男孩。 所有這些調整只需要在很小的範圍内進行。 (掌聲)