Renowned Danish design school Designskolen Kolding has evidently decided to test its students with a particularly tough assignment: Re-teach the Chinese the joys of bicycle-riding. Decades of booming economic growth have changed the picture of the transportation habits of China's cities far away from the iconic throngs of millions of uniformed workers bicycling to and from their government-assigned work stations, to a current state where biking around a city like Shanghai is almost suicidal because of the enormous amount of cars and trucks that now flood the narrow streets.
A group of Kolding design students are currently visiting Shanghai to collaborate with Chinese peers to both develop a bicycle that is consistent with the tastes and needs of potential Middle Kingdom cyclists, as well as gathering enough information to work out a viable way of building new roads with adequate – and safe – cycle lanes attached. But the assignment isn't proving an easy one.
"I honestly think we have our work cut out for us", says Barnabas Wetton, a teacher at the design school. Mr. Wetton points out that while even Danish government ministers can be spotted riding around on a bicycle once in a while, cycling is considered the epitome of "uncoolness" and hillbilly behavior in a Chinese society where the car is an ultimate status symbol.
But even though convincing the Chinese to abandon the car in favor of two wheels with no motor has proven to be very much a tough task, Mr. Wetton and his students remain optimistic.
"It's our job to design the bicycles in such a way as to make them as exciting and adapted to Chinese conditions as possible, so that at least somebody will start using them again", says Barnabas Wetton.
Full story in Danish
News category: Denmark
Published on this site: Sep. 18, 2009
Source: dr.dk