City Recumbent

Designboom says this City Recumbent bicycle design is on the shortlist of possible winning entries for their Seoul Cycle Design Contest 2010.

City Recumbent: Designboom contest entry

This recumbent by designer Jean Davignon is “a fat tire composite and aluminium recumbent bicycle with a horizontal pivot twin bar fork link steering handle.” The boom breaks apart to facilitate transportation. Internal hub gearing with a chain tensioner.

It looks like the design has some kind of sleeve to guide the chain? I don’t know that I’ve seen that before on a bicycle.

More at Design Boom. Lloyd at Treehugger wonders if recumbent bikes are appropriate for city cycling. For urban use, I’d suggest adding some other practicalities, like fenders, racks and maybe lights. H/T to Wes in Colorado Texas.

8 Comments

  1. The sleeves don’t look any different than common teflon chain tubes, seen on lots of different recumbents. What isn’t addressed in the illustrations is what happens to that chain tube when the bike is adjusted for leg length. The illustrations show it magically stretching or contracting, but the practical approach is to cut the tubes for the shortest possible length and let the chain be bare beyond that point for the longer adjustments.

  2. I’m actually in Austin, TX, Richard… but to be fair, there is a Wes Blaney in Colorado, too – he does civil engineering rather than architecture though! Thanks for the blog-

  3. I’m actually in Austin, TX, Richard… but to be fair, there is a Wes Blaney in Colorado, too – he does civil engineering rather than architecture though! Thanks for the blog-

  4. For a city bike, this is missing any kind of closed, welded loop through which to pass a lock to keep this from being stolen.

  5. For a city bike, this is missing any kind of closed, welded loop through which to pass a lock to keep this from being stolen.

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