To understand designer Don Chadwick’s point of view, consider the landscape. Specifically, the chaparral canyon where he’s made his home since 1965, and more broadly, post-war Los Angeles.

Chadwick, born in 1936, is a native Angeleno who moved to a canyon north of Brentwood over 50 years ago. In the early 2000s, following the runaway success of his most well-known design, the Aeron Chair, Chadwick enlisted architect Frederick Fisher to build a new studio on the property, where he still maintains a daily practice.

Chadwick’s body of work—largely concerned with seating—is substantial, wide-ranging, and mostly self-generated: He’s experimented with rotationally molded plastic, with rigid urethane, with self-skinning foam, and with sling suspension.

Read more in Herman Miller’s WHY Magazine.