Christopher Hobbs-Massou
Inspiration: It Comes On Two Wheels
4/4/2020 (sometimes)
I won't lie. I was not looking forward to this blog post. 'Write about what inspires me?' I don't know. If I'm completely honest, I like all sorts of designs, I can appreciate many others. But inspire? For me, I think it's when something works well and looks good. Function makes an idea fulfilling, aesthetics make it inspiring, and I need both.
Watts, L. (2019, June 24). Benedict's Crust Romanceur. Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://bikepacking.com/bikes/benedicts-crust-romanceur/
Enter, the bicycle. Bikes are beautiful, and bikes are practical. They inspire me because they are a perfect marriage of form and function.
Let's start with form. I'm someone who can look at traditional tools, buildings, anything really, forever. For me, bikes are like this too, from vintage to ultramodern, there's just something magical about the elegant form of a frame, floating between two wheels. They're a window into the worlds they come from. A race bike, a mountain bike, a city bike, each one tells you a little about the people who ride them.
Watts, L. (2019, June 24). Benedict's Crust Romanceur. Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://bikepacking.com/bikes/benedicts-crust-romanceur/
But what really sets the bicycle apart in my mind as a fantastic piece of design, is its ability to perform an enormous range of tasks, efficiently (in terms of both cost and environmental impact), and remain classy while doing it. In one of a myriad forms, what is essentially the same machine can be a race winning piece of sporting equipment, or a vital tool in local communities and developing economies. One of my favourite examples is World Bicycle Relief, a nonprofit that manufactures, sells and provides, long lasting, field repairable bicycles, mainly in developing countries in Africa. Bikes can be low cost or high spec methods of transport, exercise, sport or work, and they achieve all this, while providing joy to the people that use them, and -crucially, looking damn good too. That's why I find bikes an inspiring piece of design.
#Design100 #DesignUoA
Rider's Lens: Antonio Gallardo's Photography. (2020, March 17). Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://bikepacking.com/plog/riders-lens-antonio-gallardo/
Cited Works and Sources:
Rider's Lens: Antonio Gallardo's Photography. (2020, March 17). Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://bikepacking.com/plog/riders-lens-antonio-gallardo/
Watts, L. (2019, June 24). Benedict's Crust Romanceur. Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://bikepacking.com/bikes/benedicts-crust-romanceur/
Global Bicycle Charity. (n.d.). Retrieved April 4, 2020, from https://worldbicyclerelief.org/
https://worldbicyclerelief.org/how-we-work/model/