Niels Diffrient

Niels Diffrient (6 September 1928 – 8 June 2013) was an American industrial designer. Diffrient focused mainly on ergonomic seating, and his most well known designs are the Freedom and Liberty chairs, manufactured by Humanscale.

Diffrient was born in 1928 in a farmhouse near Star, Mississippi.

During the Great Depression his family relocated to Detroit, where Diffrient attended Cass Technical High School. He then attended Wayne State University, and finally Cranbrook Academy of Art, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in design and architecture and excelled as an outstanding student, winning the First Medal in Design three of his four years there.

While in Italy on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1954, Diffrient went to work in the studio of Marco Zanuso, where he assisted with the design of an award-winning Borletti sewing machine.

Upon arriving back in the United States in 1955, Diffrient joined Dreyfuss Associates in their Pasadena offices, and spent the next few decades revolutionizing American industrial design through his development of interiors and corporate identity for American Airlines planes, the landmark Princess telephone, the Polaroid SX-70 camera, and tractor seats for John Deere. In 1980 after 25 years with Henry Dreyfuss Associates, Diffrient left to start his own independent practice, establishing a design studio in Ridgefield, Connecticut which he shared with his wife, tapestry artist Helena Hernmarck.

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