I love it when a spontaneous idea becomes reality. Last spring, my friends from Schicke Mutze introduced me to Mette and Paul from Coh&Co Copenhagen at Cyclingworld Dusseldorf. Mette and Paul were attracted by the designs of my apparel, I was fascinated by their stone fiber bikes. It took us probably 10 minutes to decide we had to do a project together!
Less then six months later we were able to present the result of this impulsive plan at Eurobike in Friedrichshafen. But the final result took us some sweat, blood and smiles (read; long evenings of priming, sanding, priming, beers and a playlist full of guilty pleasures).
I started at home, making a design for the bike. The canvas is the very first frame that came out of the mold when Coh & Co started developing the StoneWeave. With the design I wanted to make a connection between Rotterdam and Copenhagen and between nature and urban cycling. You find my signature in the graphic elements, structures and bold use of colors. Looking from a distance, you could see an abstract landscape on the bike. Up close, you see a pattern of colorful planes and graphics. On purpose I have kept some parts of the original frame visible, so you can still see the raw material of the frame.
I took the design to Copenhagen where Mette and I applied the design on the actual frame. Definitely the biggest chunk of work involved the preparation of the frame for the paint job and translating my 2D sketch to a 3D bike. We’ve learned that taping a frame actually is rocket science! After all the preparations the bike was finally ready for the actual paint job and assembly.
We’re very please with the final result and since this all started with the legendary bike shop Schicke Mutze in Dusseldorf, that is where the bike will go now. We will present the bike on October 26th and 27th with an art & auction event. All benefits will go to the Global Footprint Network.
StoneWeave, the world’s first recyclable composite bicycle frame
The name “StoneWeave” refers to a radical new frame building technology developed by Coh&Co Copenhagen. The unique material composition – a composite of stone, glass and carbon fiber – makes for a non-corrosive, tough and long lived frame structure with inherent vibration dampening abilities. Add to that a degradable resin system which makes it possible to reclaim and reuse the fibres at the end of the bike’s lifetime and you’ve got yourself an urban game changer. https://www.cohandco.com/
Global Footprint Network
All proceeds from the auction will be donated to the Global Footprint Network. Climate change can be very abstract. Questions like “do my private efforts really matter?” and “what should I do to generate a more sustainable lifestyle” are questions most have asked themselves when taking on the challenges of a new sustainable lifestyle. The Footprint Calculator provides a user friendly way to understand the connection between lifestyle and climate change helping our understanding of urgency and the importance of shifts to green mobility like biking. https://www.footprintcalculator.org/