My good friend and amateur frame designer Mark, who has some information on his handiwork at
http://www.welwynmachineworks.blogspot.com/ has pointed me in the direction of a new architectural competition organised by the Architecture Foundation.It is for an innovative and portable modular bike storage facility, which also needs to act as a signpost or branding opportunity.
The details/brief are at http://www.architecturefoundation.org.uk/assets/files/Competitions/Bankside%20BikeShed/Bankside%20BikeShed%20Brief.pdf and we are tempted to give it a whirl.
If there are any ideas on what the ideal bike storage should include, feel free to let us know. We are thinking this is an ideal way of introducing some ideas from Holland and Denmark, where this sort of thing is not exactly thought of as cutting edge, to the UK - where it is.
What should ideal bike storage include ? Can I suggest something along the lines of the cycle parking at Groningen railway station. Space for plenty of bikes, and very useful double decker stands (see the videos) which use space very economically.
ReplyDeleteAlphen aan den Rijn's Fietsappel is rather nice too.
On the other hand, for individual ground level stands, I've yet to find something which works better, and looks better, than the tulip.
Sadly, none of these things actually fits their requirements. Capacity for 20 bikes ? 10000 pound budget ? Space for advertising ? These considerations work in a different direction to actually accommodating lots of bikes.
The Dutch do have temporary cycle parking, either for longish term use or for specific events over a weekend. It looks like this.
The second is pretty cheap to do. A load of racks delivered on a truck, and someone employed to sit in the caravan and administer it.
David,
ReplyDeleteThanks very much for taking the time to offer advice, I will certainly look up those references and we'll see what we can come up with. Agree that the constraints are a bit at odds with the stated aims, but architecture was ever thus. Nikolaus Pevsner famously wrote that Lincoln Cathedral is architecture but a bicycle shed is not, so we've got our work cut out.