The bicycle - cult object - design object
11.11.2022 - 22.09.2024 ,
Die Neue Sammlung (Design Museum in the Pinacotheca of the Modern)
- Museum café.
- Shop.
The exhibition puts the topic of bicycle design in the limelight for the first time. The focus is thus on the design and not on the cultural history of these means of transport with all the different developments it has gone through. No less than 70 examples will be showcased that are among the most unusual and most exciting bicycles in design history.
Bicycle design is closely bound up with the history of technological innovations, be it the drive systems, the suspension, brakes, gear shifts or other components. The material with its particular properties (wood, iron, steel, aluminum, magnesium, titanium, plastic, carbon, etc.) plays a decisive role in the frame design, for the weight or the aerodynamics, as does the manufacturing techniques used, which extend from classical frame-building using tubes (welding, butting, soldering, screwing, slot-ting, gluing) or mold-casted or pressed metal or plastic frames through to frames made on 3D printers.
Bicycle design is certainly not just about the skill of the craftsmen and the art of frame-building, not just the product of ingenious inventors, tinkerers, obsessed or enthusiastic amateurs, as can be seen from the countless designs by aerospace or automobile engineers, such as Paul Jaray, Hermann Klaue or Alex Moulton as well as by industrial designers in-cluding Luigi Colani, Richard Sapper, Michael Conrad, Giorgetto Giugiaro, Marc Newson, Christian Zanzotti or Ross Lovegrove.
Last edited on 22.01.2025