100 days two-wheeler event
Exhibition ‘Bicycle’

The Netherlands has 16 over million inhabitants and an estimated 18
million bicycles. This summer the Designhuis in Eindhoven will honour
this very Dutch phenomenon with an exhibition titled ‘’.
From 22 June through 5 October 2008 this exhibition will form the heart
of a 100 day two-wheeler with a wide range of activities, lectures and
trips.

The Dutch are born on a bike, it is sometimes said. They use the bike
in large numbers in their daily commute to school or work or as a tool
for transporting kids, groceries and mail. As a healthy hobby for young
and old or as a (top-class) sport, they ride it by the thousands on the
road, on the track, on forest paths or on a cross-country course. Yes,
the bicycle is even considered a vehicle for good causes.
Partly as a result of this versatile use, next to the ‘standard’
touring bike a lot of variations and niche markets have come into
being: the hybrid, children’s bikes, folding bikes, mother bikes and
grandmother bikes, racing bikes, cross hybrids, mountain bikes, ATB’s,
reclining bikes, BMX bikes, electrical bikes. Plus all kinds of bicycle
carts to transport children or objects. Not to mention clothes and
accessories: from bags, baskets and children’s seats to pumps and many
lighting systems.

The Designhuis in Eindhoven honours this phenomenon from 22 June
through 5 October in the form of the exhibition ‘ Bicycle’. The
exhibition will give an overview of the bicycle in its context, as a
means of transport, a social phenomenon, as a means of recreation, as a
lifestyle, as a means of engaging in (top-class) sport. The Designhuis
will show how such an ordinary and everyday object as the bike remains
a subject of research, development and design creativity. Motivated by
desires and needs of consumers or by their own experiences designers
keep finding inspiration for new forms, functions and materials in an
‘ordinary’ tool like the bike. It is exactly the cross-pollination
between the creative industries and the manufacturing industries that
appear to be a fertile breeding ground for innovation.