I just got back from the RCA/MADE Bicycle design summer course. It was an interesting couple of days, I met some amazing designers, and feel like I learned a lot from them. We were basically asked to ‘de-construct’ the bicycle, not literally but the concept of a bicycle, as a method of transport, and start to think of the problems associated with the bicycle. It seems the area most people were interested in was how we can get more people to cycle- specifically cycling to work and so on.

The idea was that we were to ‘innovate’ and create something new. It seemed that most people (including my own group) were intent on making an object which essentially combined the functions of two other objects. This is something i was disappointed with and most of the ideas that came about were gimmicky objects that could easily be marketed, and sold, but did not really do much to answer the main question proposed- how to get more people to cycle. I started to see that there are hundreds of product designers still doing this all over the world, which upset me a bit. I find it hard to believe that people are still being taught to think in this way; where the designer is making things for people to want for the sake of having.

On Friday I was lucky enough to have the chance to go to aconference about materials in the design of bicycles at theInstitute of Materials. Again I was slightly disappointed in what was discussed, I don’t think the issue of sustainable materials in bicycle design was was raised once. The common theme for discussion was how composites could make bicycles lighter and faster. This is obviously an interesting area to study, but what about starting to design for people who just want to ride to work, surely that is just as, if not more important.

In my opinion there is a problem which i proposed to Mike Burrows in making carbon fibre a ‘fashionable material’ for use in the ‘general consumer’s bicycle’, which was discussed at large with several other designers and materials experts. Although carbon fibre can be simply ‘patched up’ and in some cases can be separated for recycling (by using a lot of energy to seperate it) it is not a sustainable material and I feel we will be facing a problem in a few years when people are consuming carbon fibre wheels which only last a few hundred miles on London’s pot-hole ridden streets. What’s wrong with a spoke wheel that can be re-trued, or re-spoked etc. when it fails, I think that the designers working for the large bicycle manufacturers need to think before they start to put these ‘performance’ parts on general consumer bicycles.