Among the vast expanse of speckled carpet and white-washed brick adorning Humanscale’s beautiful pop-up showroom at Fulton Market, you’ll find many iterations of the company’s latest contribution to ingenuity and sustainability: the Path Task Chair.

I should add ergonomics to the qualifiers above, for Path is built around this most fundamental principle of workplace health.

Among Path’s many achievements is inclusivity. While most task chairs are engineered to provide a comfortable sit for a mere 50% of potential users, Path is designed to support all the varieties of bodies found among 95% of the population. The key is Humanscale’s patented Gravity Mechanism. This feature intuitively and automatically adjusts recline support for anyone and everyone, without knobs or bulky levers.

Path’s Form Sense Eco-Knit (a mesh, textile-like fabric) doubles down on performance. Each stitch conforms to the body with targeted zones of tension and a cradling web of support for “a beautifully responsive experience providing self-adjusted lumbar support and a tailored fit.”

Of course, Path is designed for longevity too. Chairs are tested beyond industry standard to ensure long-life and lifelong good looks: seats, backs, and arms are replaceable; no glue is used in the upholstery so fabric warping or delamination is forestalled; and grease-less cylinders banish dirt and grit build-up to maintain the chair’s performance.

But perhaps Path’s greatest achievement is its sustainability. In a milieu in which that term gets thrown around a lot, Humanscale puts their money where their proverbial mouth is. Representing “a new path forward,” Path is net climate positive. This can be difficult to quantify, and Humanscale verifies the claim with third party audits, but to get a sense of how this is achieved Humanscale explains that each Path chair contains 9.5 pounds of ocean plastic from reclaimed fishing nets and 68 recycled water bottles. It’s also toxin free (right down to the aforementioned absence of upholstery glue). Perhaps more impressive and impactful, however, Path represents a chain of influence that expands to Humanscale’s suppliers and buyers of the chair. As explained by CEO Bob King, “You have to do what’s not convenient. You have to work not only with your suppliers but their suppliers and sometimes their suppliers… the great thing about that is now they can supply all their customers. You’re actually making this technology available to the whole industry.”

Beginning June 13 and throughout NeoCon, you may visit Humanscale at their pop-up showroom at Fulton Market, 1101 W Fulton Market St. in Chicago.