With the exception of a few pieces on loan from the Saint-Étienne Museum of Art and Industry, «most of the 70 machines presented», manufactured in France as elsewhere in Europe from Portugal to the Czech Republic, «prefigure the future» of this increasingly popular mode of transport, explains Loïc Le Guen, of the NoDesign agency, designer of the exhibition, to AFP.
Organized in a city that has had major manufacturers such as Mercier, Automoto, Manufrance, or even Vitus and which was the capital of bicycles for many years, highlights the exhibition coordinator Jean-Louis Fréchin, the event is designed as «a concrete response» to «questions of preparing the world tomorrow» and its environmental concerns.
The bicycle is therefore exhibited there in all its forms: to go to work, to play competitive sports (like the Tour de France) and even for long distances and travel. An area is dedicated to cargo bikes, which are booming, which are aimed as much at last-mile deliverers as at parents who want to do their shopping or transport their children.
A model «of cargo bike derived from the one exhibited at the Cité du design will be offered from September 2023 in the 800 dealerships of Toyota France, which has ordered 5,500 copies from us», also announced during a visit to the Cité. Arno Liegeon, communication director of Douze Cycle, a French company created almost ten years ago near Dijon.
Other innovators are there, such as designer Antoine Fritsch who uses bamboo, «a flexible, light and elegant material», to design a bicycle for Hermès, says Jean-Louis Fréchin, one of his classmates from the National School. superior of industrial creation (ENSCI – Les Ateliers).
Further, the Rebirth group is inspired by automotive manufacturers to control costs and produce frames and even blue and green forks of a Pescarolo Matra model, made from recycled carbon fiber.