The OHHBike

My question is…Are cities with perfectly smooth roads and streets still the target of the future of sustainable transportation?

All I see is an underwhelming design, that has won an irrelevant design award, published on an insignificant design news blog.

Let me ask instead, which design awards are actually worthwhile nowadays, which of them put in some minor publication efforts on behalf of their winners?

That bike makes me sad.

Ditto. A bike for people who don’t ride bikes, and will never ride bikes.

What a joke.
There isn’t any evidence that e-bike riders were investigated, no effort to uncover unmet needs. Zero storage capacity, minimal adjustability. Looks like it was designed in 2D and then extruded into thickness. You see people riding on the roads and bike paths around here (Seattle) and they are riding electric bikes with huge racks and fat tires! Like, 2.5"-3.0"! Who needs efficiency when you have a supplementary motor, really! The industrial design is like, part pizza, part hamburger, part sushi, no cohesion (…the rear stays are this flowing shape that looks like it came from a completely different project).

The one redeeming quality that most e-bike concepts miss is that you can actually adjust the seat height. You should make the seat very low so you can use your feet to stop, as the FRONT RIM CALIPER BRAKE will fail to arrest your careening through the Barcelona streets.

Not just cities with smooth streets, but cites in general. More evidence…

More evidence of what, sir?

I don’t see how your question is relevant. What is the research?
Would you want streets to be bumpy?
And no smooth roads aren’t the goal of sustainable transportation - sustainability + a cyclical product/service economy is.
Street-wise, we may see a shift from tar-based asphalt to something like polymer based composites involving recycled silicone.
Similar to most industries where bitumen/pitch was used as a raw product, at some point it becomes clear it has disadvantages + is carcinogenic so it gets replaced.

Design-wise I agree with the others; this is appliance design applied to mobility gone bad.
“The refined and elegant aesthetics of the bike makes it attractive and fun to use.” Yes, a bent and stretched shoebox in penguin duotone, how elegant.
The thing about undesirable mobility designs is, it will be great for a rental bike. People will only be want to be seen on it for short periods, so nobody thinks they own the bike. They will not steal it and be motivated to pass it on to the next renter.

But that was not your question.

The so called “smart city” has come under question for the last few years, and has become accelerated during Covid. A quick search will reveal this trend in thinking. Smooth streets that are the product of new cites, and eventually all become bumpy through the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, and that along with a dash of Ephemeralization leaves this bike design’s life span very very short. Not sustainable at all I think.

It will however get you to Barcelona’s Sant Sebastià beach (or London, UK) in style with or without clothing.

Yes asphalt has volatiles that evaporate.
But it can be solved. There’s tons of process parameters.
Does your table top also become bumpy because of Newton’s 2nd law?

Please stop smoking the hash pipe and make sense please.

But if your question relates to the influence of the anima in male-dominated design culture, where we may see a redressing of balance toward deconstructivism as the global manufacturing paradigm, I do think that’s interesting. Especially given that digital fabrication technology seems to be nudging that way. I’ve never fully understood Frank Gehry other than seeing him at work makes me realize he’s a genius.

By the way I agree that Barcelona is very bikeable, with or without clothing. As opposed to Milan, gee!