Dutch design: a fresh look at the bicycle

Radio Netherlands Worldwide, 7 April 2010 - 10:48am, by John Tyler

The Dutchess (Photo: Van Munsum)

The bicycle may not have been invented in the Netherlands, but the Dutch have been making bikes for 140 years and they are as much a part of the national landscape as tulips and windmills.

Fifteen major Dutch companies make bikes, and the Netherlands is the largest producer of bicycles in Europe.

Bikes are part of the Dutch DNA. Small wonder, then, that three young Dutch industrial designers, more used to producing objects like tables and chairs, decided to try their hands at making new bicycles.

Three different stories, three different bikes. But all of them original, functional and fun.

John Tyler in conversation with the bike designers

The Dutchess

Wytze van Mansum has designed the Dutchess, a bicycle that US manufacturer Cannondale is considering for the American market. Wytze made the Dutchess to be very low-maintenance. All the wires are inside the frame, as is the transmission.

"The bicycle is a very pure product; you see everything, it's very functional." he says. "We all like the function of the bicycle, it's a very simple device that makes you go faster. In my design I've tried to make it very functional, because I think there's still a lot of downsides to cycling."

It is a beautiful bike. At first glance, the Dutchess looks like a normal city bike, what the Dutch call anomafiets, or grandma bike. But a closer inspection reveals the simple elegance of the design.

Herman van Hulsteijn is impressed:

"It's really weird because in a country like Holland there are so many bicycles around, but hardly anything has been done about a really nice design of it. I just didn't like the things I saw. If you look at how many bikes there are, a small percentage are nice to look at."

John Tyler on the Cyclone (Photo: RNW)

The Cyclone

So Herman drew up a sketch for what would become the Cyclone. Like Wytze, Herman emphasises that his bike is functional. In fact, he and a few of his colleagues plan to ride Cyclones more than 1,000 km, from Milan back to the Netherlands, later this month.

Herman will be in Milan to show the other aspect of his bike: its form. He will be there to take part in theSalone di Mobile, one of the foremost designer shows in the world.

The main feature of the Cyclone is a large curve, stretching from the saddle forward toward the handlebars, and ending back at the rear wheel. The rider seems to float in mid-air.

Tjeerd Veenhoven appreciates just how tough it is to make bikes that are both pretty and functional.

"I've seen so many cool bikes which are impossible to order parts for. There's no real vision in producing them, just making them really pretty and expensive. I've owned several of those bikes."

The Ordinary Carbon Bike

Ordinary Carbon Bike

Tjeerd Veenhoven's design is called the Ordinary Carbon Bike. I call it the ribbon bike, because it looks like it's made out of the ribbon you would use to wrap a present. It doesn't look like it should stand up, let alone carry a person.

Tjeerd: "I took a totally different approach than these guys. I never really meant to design a bike, I just wanted to degrade fibre as it's used right now, as a really hi-tech material. That was my main focus, and the bike was good to experiment with that."

But the question is, do you have to be Dutch to design bikes like these?

The combination of pragmatism, or functionality, and form is a big part of the design movement called Dutch Design.

Wytze, for one, remains humble:

"I think that people in other countries can design these bikes, but because we and the Danish as well, we have the most experience with bikes, that's why we do this. There's just a larger percentage of people who are interested in bikes, so they're more likely to come from the Netherlands or Denmark than from other countries."

• 967,000 bikes were made in the Netherlands in 2006, at a sales value of 453 million euros
  
  
• The Netherlands is the biggest producer of bikes in Europe, making 30 percent of all bikes made in Europe.
  
  
• Nearly 1.4 million bikes were sold in the Netherlands in 2008.
  
  
• In 2005 Dutch people rode their bikes 14 billion kilometres - that's 2.5 km a day for every resident of the country.