Bikes: A Fol­low Up

Port­able Bikes

Simple Inner City Bike

The two-page spread on bikes in ProDesign issue 104 was par­tic­u­larly well received. Unfor­tu­nately we couldn't include all the bikes in the spread that we had ori­gin­ally planned, so here's a small gal­lery of fold­ing or port­able bikes. Joey Ruiter's re-imagining of the bike at left prob­ably gen­er­ated the most com­ments, so I've added a couple more pics below. If anyone's doing any­thing with port­able bikes in New Zea­l­and I'd be inter­ested in hear­ing from you. One wag did men­tion that we have far too many hills in Auck­land and Wel­ling­ton for bikes with ridicu­lously small wheels… if that's true then I'd wager the people I'm most likely to hear from are in Christ­ch­urch or, pos­sibly, Hamiltron.

Simple Inner City Bike by Ruiter Stu­dios in Michigan. Info from Joey Ruiter:

“Our pro­ject, sim­pli­city in inner city bicyc­ling, was at first glance a fun aes­thetic oppor­tun­ity in new trends, color, and mater­i­als. Our tar­get lived/worked in an inner city envir­on­ment with min­imal space. Bicyc­ling at this level can be more about fash­ion and cul­ture than speed and per­form­ance. After the first few brain­storm ses­sions we knew there where big­ger oppor­tun­it­ies. The pro­ject rethought what a “frame” meant, get­ting ride of basic key com­pon­ents, and cre­at­ing a new type of com­pact bicyc­ling. Inspired by the "hobby horse" from it's sim­pli­city and the café race scene. Each is an exer­cise in strip­ping some­thing down to its core. The final design came down to a frame sys­tem and a really dif­fi­cult 1:1.5 plan­et­ary gear, free-wheeling, rear hub. Everything else is rider preference."

Simple Inner City Bike — designed by Ruiter Studio.

Eco // 07 – Com­pact­able Urban Bicycle by Vic­tor Ale­man: There are more pics and an explan­a­tion of how this fold­ing bike works over at Yanko Design. Ale­man cer­tainly takes com­pact to new levels. Won­der how com­fort­able the ride is though.

Vic­tor Aleman's Eco // 07.

Vic­tor Aleman's Eco // 07.

Fold­able wheel — six sec­tions with double-hinged joints.

The bike deconstructed.

Tyrell 20inch Bikes: Aside from being a fic­tional mega-corporation in Rid­ley Scott's Blade Run­ner, Tyrell is also a Japan­ese com­pany spe­cial­ising in port­able 20inch-wheel bikes. My Japan­ese is a bit rusty, so it's a bit touch get­ting a handle on the specs. The bikes cer­tainly look the part though.

Tyrell Gold.

Montague Swiss Mil­it­ary XO: In stark con­trast to the bikes above, this beast looks like it might last forever. It's pos­sibly the anti­thesis of the Tyrell, which looks like a sed­ate ride down to the shops for a pint of milk might be it's limit. More specs over here.

Swiss XO fold­ing bike.

Swiss XO fold­ing bike.

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