Most people wouldn't think to bike to the supermarket, for example, because it'd be too hard or uncomfortable to lug their groceries home. That's the sort of project that gets designers up in the morning-the task of redefining conventional wisdom. They're also drawn to the rethinking the design of product that has changed so little over so many decades and the challenge of creating something that could reshape the way people get around. But designers, like the bike builders themselves, love a competition that pits their creativity against their peers. It may seem odd for these global design consultancies to give up weeks of their designers' time to a project so narrow in scope with no obvious financial payoff.
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And San Francisco-based Fuseproject, the firm created by design industry legend Yves Behar that ginned up the Jawbone Bluetooth headset, is paired with S圜ip Bikes in Santa Rosa, Calif. Ideo, the Palo Alto, Calif., design consultancy perhaps best known in the business world for championing a strategy of "design thinking" that applies design concepts to management processes, is working with Rock Lobster Custom Cycles in Santa Cruz, Calif. Ziba, which worked with KitchenAid, among others, to re-create its iconic electric mixer, is working with tiny Signal Cycles from Portland. Unlike the main competition, there's no cash prize for coming in first in the design team category.Įven so, the challenge has drawn three of the best-known names in the design world. But the winning team gets nothing more than the pride of victory. The winner in the design-bike builder category will be selected in a Web voting competition this fall. "Most of the custom builders are tied to a classic aesthetic," Oregon Manifest board director Shannon Holt said. The idea is to push the bike-building business to reconsider traditional frame design, which has seen breakthroughs in materials over the years but little innovation in decades in the shape of those frames themselves. Oregon Manifest, in its main competition, has invited bike builders from around the country to create the best bike for urban living.īut Oregon Manifest also created a novel category for this year's competition pairing three of the most creative independent bike builders with world-class design firms. Like the dozens of bike building competitions, Oregon Manifest pits designers against one another to come with a novel creation that shows off the flair and ingenuity of the handcrafted bicycle-making community across the United States. Welcome to the Oregon Manifest 2011 Constructor's Design Challenge, a bike building competition with a twist. "All of a sudden, we were asking him how he deals with storage," Backett said. But in many ways, it is the current state-of-the-art when it comes to utility bikes. There was no fit and finish to his creation either. It was laden with his personal belongings. He'd jury-rigged his bike too, with backpacks hanging off the handlebars and a trash can rolling behind. "He was telling us how cool it was and asking about the sidecar," said Paul Backett, Ziba's director of industrial design.ĭesigners from Ziba and Signal Cycles created a quick-and-dirty prototype of a bicycle sidecar for the Oregon Manifest utility bike design competition.Īnd then it dawned on the group that the man was, maybe, the prototypical user. The team slapped it together quickly with wheels from a bike trailer, a rectangular bin crafted from Styrofoam and particle board, and a wood dowel duct-taped on one side to the sidecar and the other to the bike.Īs the team admired its creation on a side street in downtown Portland, a homeless man rode up on his own bike. The sidecar had no gloss, no fit or finish.
It was a standard hybrid bike, the kind you see commuters pedaling to and from work everyday, with the notable exception of a sidecar, just off the right side of the rear wheel and just big enough to fit two bags of groceries.
The group of five took a Franken-bike out for a spin this spring.
Just ask the team of designers at Ziba design consultancy in Portland, Ore., and bike builders at nearby Signal Cycles, who are working together to create the ultimate utility ride.
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