He was honoured in last year’s FX Awards, held in London last November, as the recipient of the Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award. The renowned industrial designer and Humanscale partner for over 16 years died on the morning of 8 June at his home in Connecticut, though his death was not publicly announced for several days.
FX editor Theresa Dowling, who met Diffrient in 2008, said: ‘Niels was a rare blend: worldwide industrial designer without an ego. Long before the celebrity designer was invented, by which he was unmoved and unimpressed, he was the consummate international designer who didn’t feel the need to shout about it, much less cash in on it.
‘ I met him at Orgatec at the height of the worldwide recession, where he could have been mistaken for an elderly gent helping out. Someone’s dad maybe. But despite a background of our industry screaming "the world’s collapsing and there’s no money for design!", he had seen it all before. He chatted that his best work was achieved in a recession, where you pare down to the bare bones of what’s needed. And that for designers to take away all the bells and whistles and focus on the core problem, isn’t such a bad thing.
‘His phenomenal achievements were without internet access, iPhones, iPads and other smart gizmos we have now, but he nevertheless succeeded in delivering truly world-class products. His post-war legacy of a collective and compassionate approach to design, and for designing for Joe Public, is something often trumpeted by the new generation of designers, but rarely delivered.’
In a career spanning more than half a century, Diffrient applied his talents to a diverse range of products including sewing machines, tractor seats and aeroplane interiors, but it is for his pioneering work with ergonomics and the office task chair that he was and will be held in greatest esteem.
Chairs including the Freedom Chair, Diffrient World Chair and Liberty Chair, all designed for Humanscale, and the Diffrient Chair for Knoll, did much to define the notion of the modern ergonomic task chair and earned Diffrient the nickname ‘granddaddy of the ergonomic revolution’, from Forbes magazine. Much knowledge and research underpinned his design work, and the three-volume publication Humanscale, which Diffrient co-authored, fundamentally changed the way we relate the design of office furniture to the function of the human body.
Born in Mississippi and raised in Detroit, Diffrient studied painting and then architecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan, which counts Charles Eames, Harry Bertoia and Eero Saarinen among its alumni, and he worked with the latter in the Forties. His passion was for aircraft design, and he worked for a while in aeronautical engineering, but realising that he would never actually get to design a plane he moved on to work in the office of industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss. He set up his own practice in 1980.
He worked with Humanscale for well over a decade, designing the company’s most successful task chairs. Bob King, CEO of Humanscale, said he and Diffrient shared a philosophy of making things that are easy to use: ‘Niels believed in the importance of function and knew that great design must be driven by function. This is why his products often transcend any specific time or place. What he believed in is so evident in his work that his legacy will live on through his designs.’ When King met Diffrient, King’s company did not produce chairs, but he recalled how after seeing Diffrient’s prototype designs for what became the Freedom chair he felt like he had ‘just seen the future of task seating.’
Early tributes were made on Twitter. They included messages from fellow designers, admirers and design institutions. Designer Yves Behar tweeted: ‘…Hope great Designers can help make people know more about him.’ Digital designer Sri Jalasutram wrote: ‘Diffrient was one of the most advanced industrial designers that ever lived’, and Robert Johnson, of Tangram Design, said ‘…Thank you for Humanscale 1/2/3 – a must-have for every industrial designer.’
The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt national design museum in New York tweeted: ‘Cooper-Hewitt mourns the loss of National Design Award winner Niels Diffrient.’
In addition to the many honours he received, Diffrient was an Honorary Royal Designer for Industry, awarded by the Royal Society of Arts and Industry in 1987.
