Reinventing the bike

Clogged streets, car exhaust, restricted mobility. The car is an essential part of our everyday life, but in recent years, especially in the cities, the desire for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle has led to a renaissance of the bicycle culture. In Berlin, citizen movements proclaim a new transport policy or even propose new city planning concepts. Designers as well as manufacturers react to the demands of a changing mobility with exciting designs offering new solutions for urban areas.

Is this a reasonable topic for the applied art? Certainly for the GRASSI Museum of Applied Art in Leipzig. Bicycle designs has long since evolved from a simple everyday objects and finds all different forms of expressions with sustainable and artistic approaches. At the exhibition everyday bicycles and prototypes from the past years draw a new picture of today’s cycling culture in Europe and North America. New requirements and technical possibilities have made a significant impact on the design, for example carbon bikes from the UK, models made of bamboo and carbon as well as wheels with an extremely light titanium frame, pure single speeds with toothed belt drive or attachable motors, which convert any conventional bike into an e-bike.