More Photos Below!Gallery
I love bike design and high-rez photography of sweet bikes. A new book from Austria called “Smart Move” lays out a splendid display of both.
A Viennese architect decided to become a bike collector not too long ago…and started buying. He doesn’t fancy himself a bike buff—instead, he loves the wild range of design as expressed in bikes.
Cutting edge bikes is what Michael Embacher collects, by the hundreds, and displays in an amazing yet compact urban museum—which drew enough public acclaim to inspire this book.
Ever since bikes were invented there’s been a sizeable sector in bike design where inventors try to improve on basic aspects or bring new design or function flavors to the forefront. Eccentric design is perhaps common in cycling because the overhead to innovation might be lower than in other industry. Embacher’s view is, if I have it right, that anyone can make a standard nicely-performing bike. Ho-hum. He wants bikes that take risks. …And he says he rides the bikes he buys. They have something special to offer. It’s not so much that his bikes always work the best, but that they have nerve.
Embacher also hosts a thorough and remarkable website of his collection: www.smart-move.at/en/collection.html.
To a bike enthusiast, the selection of bikes onto which the book lavishes such sharp attention might seem awkward, even for a collection of unusual bikes, but from a design view the impact of the assortment serves to open the mind as to how bikes can serve us. And that’s a fair accomplishment in its own right.
Humans possess just a tiny engine and we have many transport needs and interests. It’s amazing that mere wheels and gears can be cleverly arranged to serve dozens of these needs—and to improve on them in a myriad of ways—or at least offer variety. Embacher focuses on race bikes and folders, but workbikes come on strong as well. Really there’s a fair helping from a very wide range here. So what if some of my own favorite (and successful) far-out designs and eccentrics were left out! An editor can’t please everyone. And there’s always room for another book of otherwise ignored bike design. It certainly hasn’t all been covered yet!
Mostly, this is a photo book. The captions and essays are occasionally enlightening — despite their “softness” they help us see bikes as regular people see them, people possibly even interested in using the featured design as intended. In the end, these designers win some and lose some, but in cycling no one really gets hurt.
The book is available in the USA via vintagebicyclepress.com.
(For another, even more diverse look at the art of bike design, I suggest encycleopedia.com and its print back issues.)
The museum attic in Vienna.
What a display space! …A masterpiece of design in its own right.
A folder…
A curvacious racer…
The book.
