It is an understatement to say that I have gained a reputation as a “chair guy” on account of the fact that I have found multiple Herman Miller chairs on the streets of New York City. The Aeron is not my favorite chair, though she is indisputably an icon. My favorite chair is the weirdest one of all: the HÅG Capisco 8106, an ergonomic little freak chair designed for people who just can’t sit in one place.
The HÅG Capisco looks bizarre. Unsurprisingly, it was designed by a Norwegian industrial designer, Peter Opsvik, who also designed several chairs for children, kneeling chairs, and a lounge chair named “Garden” that looks like a tree with a bunch of orbs (AKA the chair Worf uses) I have often described the Capisco as “the art Delia Deetz makes in Beetlejuice but you sit on it.” Joe Rogan uses them in his studio, which is a bizarre reputation for this chair, but this is one of those rare instances where I agree with Rogan (along with his love of submission grappling and doing a lot of psychedelics).
Unlike a traditional chair where you just sit in normally, the Capisco is meant to account for multiple seating positions. Some other, “normal” office chairs have elements of this flexibility. For example, the Knoll Generation (which I once salvaged half a dumpster's worth of in midtown thanks to a reader tip) has a flexible back that allows the user lean on the top while side-sitting. But the cross-shaped back of the Capisco allows you to sit in ways impossible in other seating: forwards-facing, sideways, perched up high, and backwards with the seat back pressed against your chest – the “let me rap with you” position, or Riker maneuver as it is often called. (This chair has, in fact, been featured on Star Trek multiple times as well as The Expanse.) You can actually combine the backwards position with the lockable tilt mechanism, allowing you to face your desk leaning forward like you’re driving a Kawasaki motorcycle. This is appropriate, because Peter Opsvik based his design of the chair on the posture of horseback riding, a dynamic and constantly shifting saddle that meets the rider as weight distribution changes.
I own two Capiscos. The best-known model is the HÅG Capisco 8106, but my first was a “Puls” model I got cheap on Craigslist from a startup guy in Tribeca who got it with a Covid stipend and said his “wife hates it.” The Puls is a budget friendly version that swaps much of the fabric back out for rigid, injection-molded plastic. This is far more useful if you are in a medical environment or someplace where you may easily stain the fabric, but some people may just enjoy the feeling of rigid plastic on their skin. I do not, and for that reason the chair is now on semi-permanent loan to my local hacking space. But the Puls gave me a taste for the real thing. and I have been quietly searching Facebook Marketplace for an 8106 ever since. This week, I found someone who had one sitting in storage and on a severe discount because it needs replacement foam on the seat. After a long and complex ride via public transit (it was raining and no cabs were available), my baby was home.
There was a time several years ago when everyone was praising standing desks, which resulted in a boom in their production. The idea is that it is not natural for a person to be sitting for extended periods of time, and even the nicest chair is going to do a number on your back. The other advantage is that even if you don’t use a standing desk for its stated purpose, it’s still an affordable desk that’s easy to adjust the height of. With my Aeron I do not use my standing desk to its potential, but the HÅG Capisco positively sings with it. I find myself adjusting both my standing desk and Capisco multiple times to rapidly change to a more stable sitting position. It is also possibly the only chair that consistently gets my arms into an ergonomic typing position with my equally freakish split keyboard from both a forward and backward seating position. That said, lest I besmirch the Aeron too much, I like having it in my office as well for when I need to just sit normally for like 20 seconds.
While the Capisco is designed with flexibility in mind, it is also far better at suggesting that the user gets into an ergonomic frame of mind. Sat in the most traditional way possible, the seat forces your hips into a wider stance, while the sides of the cushion roll off gently, relieving pressure on the bottom of the thighs (to me, the Aeron’s biggest Achilles heel). The cushioned but semi-rigid nature of the backrest makes it difficult to slouch, and the arm rests being behind the back lead the user to organically adopt a position with good posture. For example, if you use the arm rests in the forward position during a typing break, the elbows tend to fall to the side or even behind the user, forcing the elbows to pinch together, thus ensuring ideal posture. If you have ever seen a person lean on the edge of a Jacuzzi, imagine that arm position but lower.
But the Capisco also allows for potentially freakish ways of sitting. You can perch on the edge, basically using it to half sit and half stand. It is a chair that is meant to be fidgeted in, leaned on, and very importantly perched on. The legs of the chair feature ridged surfaces which are perfect for putting your feet up on, thus removing the need for a foot rest, although they do offer a comical one that snaps into the base called the StepUp, as well as a headrest, which looks bizarre even compared to the chair. A good friend of mine, who snagged two Capiscos relatively cheap when a startup went bust, has the model with foot rings which he loves for this specific purpose.
The HÅG Capisco 8106 fares better than many chairs in terms of basic repairability. The back rest is attached to the base with a single hex bolt, which allows the chair to be converted to a stool in under a minute. I have taken apart many office chairs with complex mechanisms, and the Capisco is surprisingly straightforward despite its strange appearance. If it has a weakness it is that, like all cushion-based chairs, the seat foam will eventually deteriorate and the fabric may need to be refreshed or cleaned. Like most seat parts, replacement foam can be bought from your local distributor. When it comes to the fabric, a surface cleaning will suffice most of the time. But for removal, while the upholstery on the backrest upholstery has zippers that allow it to be removed easily, the mechanism for the seat fabric is more elaborate and annoying to remove. If I had to change anything, making that easier would be on the top of my list. That said, these are relatively minor complaints for an otherwise simple, easy to service chair.
While the Capisco is not a chair I would recommend to everyone, I find that people who sit on one tend to like it more often than not. It is an office chair that exists outside of tier lists because it’s off in space doing its own thing. I can imagine a well-meaning but oblivious Hank Scorpio-style CEO buying a fleet of these in the startup boom only to have a few of his employees resent him and bring in folding chairs after a month. But for a certain kind of person, there is no better chair for sitting, or leaning, or perching like a freaky gremlin. I have heard from a friend it is fantastic for shorter people (*cough* Joe Rogan *cough*). This is a chair for vigorously Scandinavian people and L from Death Note. Though you technically are sitting in a Capisco, it is functionally so anti-chair that I hesitate to call it “sitting.” Welcome to “Sitting 2.”
