Sitting Is Deadly! Will Banning Chairs Altogether Help?

 Sitting for long hours is something that really bothers me! Even though, I am no doctor, I feel the effects, it has had on me and perhaps, my health! Who knows!

 Sometimes, I feels like I am just learning to walking all over again, each time after work, when I leave that tiny chair, where I have been seated for hours! 

Where I work; you can't really get to walk around or leave your chair much as you are trapped; to take in customers calls, buffered into a 'queuing queue'. 

Now again, height is an issue as most office chairs are pretty small. If you are tall, it becomes difficult to do this sitting. In my case, it is very obvious, that this sitting for long hours, has affected me! I am in pains each day, all through each shift. 

Ofcourse, all the muscles in my legs, go through painful spasms but even worse, is the pains in the upper half of the body. My eyes are pounding from too much stress, coming from perhaps, the spinal cord and the back of neck! Well, no way to really avoid it!

 When you sit on that office chair overtime, you know longer feel that couchy feeling under your buttocks over time! It soon starts to feel very much like you are sitting on bare plank. You even start to get blisters on your buttocks as it gets really bad. 

Too; as you are seated with the middle part of your body or your core; it is bound to stress the top and bottom part of the body. Combined that, with lack of sleep all night and imagine the stress accrued. 

Sometimes, I tend to think that the extreme stress, that I go through from sitting too much, stole my ability to sleep away! 

Nothing is proven though, as I haven't gone to the hospital etc; but this topic is starting to concern even the world as a whole!

The design studio is thinking of radically reconstructing the indoor environment as a way to break the habit of sitting all day. 

The health deficits, from sitting all day is so widely studied that it is becoming impossible to ignore! Studies are realizing that sitting all day, slows metabolism, increases lower-back-pain and even shortens life span amongst other forms of health ailment. 

It is also becoming evident, that not even daily exercise or its effects, isn't sufficient, to offset the damage, that too much sitting does!   

So how about eliminating chairs all together?   

At the Dutch design studio called RAAAF or Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances), its co-founders have been on a course study, involving redesigning work and home environments, in relation to how sedentary we are. 

 They debuted their installations called End of Sitting, in 2014 and are opening Breaking Habits this month, at the Mondriaan fund for visual arts Amsterdam; all aimed, towards presenting chair-free environments as the concession is that; "as long as there are chairs in sight, there is an habitual tendency for humans to sit in them".   

Most of RAAAF installations are still conceptual but tries to answer questions like; "what will happen if there were no chairs altogether as well as whether that is even accomplishable". 

"Too, will removing chairs, really solve our societal sitting problem or lead to new problems?"  

 They study the habitual nature of humans, in their 'scientific concept of accordances'; i.e "the idea that human behavior is mostly learned, by picking up information that is mostly relevant to survival, while neglecting the rest!"  

Historically, trees have mostly been seen, for climbing on, holes for hiding in and chairs for sitting on. 

 RAAAF are trying to apply the idea of affordances and seeing how it can be applied to the prospect of perhaps, a chair-less and even table-less environment in the future!   

 An office filled with a labyrinth of concrete and plywood and without traditional desks and chairs? Why not! Use this picture to conceptualize it:

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

RAAAF's 'Breaking Habits'; happening this month, expands on the concept started by End of Sitting; by looking at how homes, can be restructured as well, to reduce or eliminate sitting for long hours. 

In their installation concepts, there are no desks for PCs and no furniture, that allows you watch TV, while in bed and people will be trying new positions like leaning, standing, or lying against soft surfaces, instead! 

Results from user experiences are then studied by behavioral scientists. Interactions with this new environment; are studied informally as well, to be able to carry out a better formal scientific study, on how people might use this new infrastructure or how they would react to radical changes to the structure of their environment.  

 RAAAF's concept isn't exactly modeled around comfort but more about having people learn to become comfortable, in new positions as well as help people improve in their enthusiasm for new environments, thus, encouraging people to change positions more frequently.  

In one of the installations for Breaking Habits, there are pyramids or perpendicular walls for people to lean on and some walls are suspended for one to lie down when tired. The aim is temporary comfort!

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

One of the main health concerns from sitting long hours, is the slow-down of metabolism. Skeletal muscles stay inactive and metabolic pathways linked to how the muscles regulate and store fats and breakdown sugar, is less efficient and this is reason, for metabolic-related disease like diabetes, some form of cancers, heart diseases etc.  

Breaking Habits had installations, like rungs hanging from the ceiling to encourage stretching or oscillating between standing and sitting.  

image source/credit to: fastcodesign

 

This in itself, doesn't totally negate the health hazards from sitting too long but combined with regular exercises and exerted activities, it will do a lot to improve metabolism or counteract slow metabolism. 

Thus, it is not exactly that a chair-less environment will get us to exercise more but it will definitely encourage us to invent other types of resting positions as this will become a necessity. 

In general, people know how to react to the environment that we are afforded. 

Ultimately though, humans are designed to rest, so there is no eliminating that!  

Chair-less environments, tries to get adults to re-enact what we as children did instinctively. 

Kids instinctively invent different sitting positions even as they rest on a chair. They may sit on their heels or cross their legs or sitting in squatting positions.   

Ofcourse, standing too long as well is detrimental to health, so the aim to eliminate all chairs, has to involve replacing them, with better and perhaps, more fun resting options.  

 A Chair-less environment isn't necessarily the solution for being sedentary but it is definitely some aspect of design that designers may want to explore!   

Break Habits is thus, open to designers and scientists, who may want to mull over something related to chair-less environments, between now and 2025, the year, when RAAAF, is set to effect its first futuristic home model. 

So imagine a home, with just a few carpets and better alternatives, replacing chairs!   

 

 

Additional source for article/credit to:

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3068098/evidence/sitting-is-deadly-could-banning-chairs-help/4
 

Your boy Terry

@surpassinggoogle

Sent from my iPad