Bikes are a wonderful component to living in Boulder, as a capstone to the great infrastructure in the community I’d like to build something to hang my bike on. Something I love most about bikes is their simple mechanical design and tability to rebuild them. I think this behavior epitomizes upcycling and not just the bad play on words. I want to use unused bike parts to create a bike stand that displays the beauty of a bike like a piece at the Louvre. It also has a great similarity to dead animals on the wall, but without making a trophy of killing something.

to look something like this:

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mf6nojKF9R1qe6j4g.png

The end result looked similar but I made some additions and changes. I drew inspiration from my neighbor’s use of dead animals on their walls to decorate their home. I wanted to have a similar aesthetic but don’t have much interest in displaying dead animals on the wall. My piece is a critique on the southern Steer’s that often adorn walls as decoration. A noted inspiration is Georgia O’keefe’s work with inspirations of the desolate Southwest.

http://www.georgiaokeeffe.net/images/paintings/rams-head.jpg

The design of this piece was surprisingly straight forward. Much of it depended on the standard dimensions of bike components which kept everything uniform. This is often where I can get hung up in prototyping or building so that kept the process linear. Besides trying out a few clamps there was limited rework or going back to earlier stages which gave a straight forward design process.

In this project I had hoped to give some wall art but also give an opportunity to hang my bikes on the walls as additional wall art. It doubles as an individual piece without a bike hanging but also has utility to hold the bike. That was the intention and the piece is definitely strong enough to support a bike. In that sense the design intent functionally was met. Additionally I would like to add softer bar tape to the inside of the bars as not to scratch any bike I do decide to hang from it. I would also like to change the clamping mechanism so it’s more flush with the back surface. Aesthetically, my intentions and hopes were exceeded. I think the white saddle gave a real analog to a bone feel and it has good contrast with the industrial feel of the metal bars.

I plan to keep the piece and will use it in my garage to go with the industrial feel. I am happy with the result and if I ever decide to use the components again I can do so. But while they’re sitting there, they have a function to holding my other bikes, and an aesthetic to inspire.