If you are an enthusiast of industrial design and ergonomics, you probably know about Niels Diffrient, the creator of the Humanscale Freedom Chair.
Lets take a look into some facts about its life.
Born in Mississippi in 1928 and dead in Connecticut in 2013, Neils Diffrient is one of the greatest figures of the Industrial Design in the second half of XX century.
Focused mainly in industrial furniture design, Diffrient was a great developer of Ergonomics as an basic input of Design. He used to call it Human Factors.
Among his better recognized works, we can mention the Humanscale Freedom Chair, the Polaroid SX-70, and the World Chair. He has received many awards, like the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, and is an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry, by the Royal Society of Arts and Industry.
As a young boy, Diffrient received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Architecture from the Crambok Academy. His academic achievements made him eligible for a Fullbright scholarship, which he use to study in Rome with Marco Sanuzo, a great European Architect. They were awarded due to their work with the Borletti Sewing Machine, in which design Diffrient worked as Assistant.
Since then he began a career of more than 50 years, in which he made great contributions not only in furniture but in other elements, such as computers and electronic devices. The Polaroid SX 70, the Princess Telephone are samples of the wide array of design fields where Diffrient made it great. But without a doubt, his work in the Freedom Chair, Liberty Chair, and World Chair, to name a few is one of the greatest achievements, in association with Humanscale.