OK, if you don’t know by now, I’m a bike lover. I’m not a “cycling” enthusiast who follows the sport or has any cycling clothes or bikes, but I love bicycling because it is such a nice transportation option — pleasant, fast, easy, cheap — and bicycling for transportation purposes is one of the greenest things you can do.
Anyway, that was all a preface to this awesome vertical bike storage design I ran across this weekend and an explanation for why I wrote “AWESOME” in the title (in case you didn’t get that). Above are some images from Manifesto Architecture via The City Fix.
How This Bike Storage System, Bike Hanger, Works
Manifesto Architecture, based in New York, is the firm developing this system, for Seoul and London to start. It has titled the system “Bike Hanger.” And, of course, if you didn’t catch it in the images above, this bike hanger would be bicycle powered! Cool. It calls the stationary bike for rotating the hanger the “human generator.” Once you’ve pedalled your bike to the bottom on the human generator, you just pull the retractable hanger, get your bicycle, and ride off. Getting your bike on the rack follows a similar procedure.
The system eliminates the need for heavy bike locks or carrying your bike seat or wheel around with you, something some people feel they have to do to prevent master thieves from stealing their rides or pieces of it.
Bike Hanger is Super Green, Too
Beyond being for bikes and being bike-powered, Bike Hanger is super green in some other ways as well.
“Manifesto Architecture intends to build the structure out of all recycled materials, including recycled plastic bottles, stainless steel, and carbon frames, in order to make it an all-around sustainable city addition,” The City Fix reports, making the system even that much greener.
Annual maintenance cost of this baby: $15 — for lubrication and calibration. Nice.
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