Good morning. I'm industrial designer
I'm from Rio de Janeiro
I live in Denmark
and I thought interesting to bring some of Denmark here
to show you.
Regard to the use of bicycle. The democratic question on traffic in Denmark.
I've got super inspired and surprised in the first time I was in Denmark
I was taking pictures to understand what was happening there.
How happened that? People use bikes so much there.
How could that be so harmonically between car and bike?
And, for example, there's a thing here, the traffic light is red for the car
and it's green for the bike.
So, there's this kind of fair play, where the bike can go ahead
because it's slower, it's weaker
and the car has to go after.
Historically, that was the first bike actually, that was a walker
and that was made for short displacements and that had a concept all concerned as a personal object
made of a natural material, as wood
and I believe that initial concept was getting lost in the course of time
due to a lot of factors, like Industrial Revolution and such
until to reach the bicycle as we know today.
When I began to study Industrial Design
I look at that bike and I thought that could be rethought
how could we reinvent the bike?
That was one of the first bamboo bikes I've made
trying to retrieve some of those concepts.
That had a really great repercussion in the year 2000
including inspiring other people to work with bamboo, bamboo bike.
Here where everything has started. I've worked with research at PUC-RJ in the bamboo lab
the bamboo technique development was essentially based by "trial and error"
and a lot of patience and persistence as well.
There was no particular technique for bamboo so far
you couldn't go to a garage to weld the bamboo. I had to figure out how to cut the bamboo
how I'd deal with bamboo, where I'd get bamboo
how I'd make connections with that, how I'd build a structure
and the details of that small structure.
Why have I considered bamboo interesting?
The first thing is based upon a word called "abundance".
Bamboo... I think everyone here has passed by a bamboo forest, a bamboo farm
Bamboo is spread throughout Brazil, that is a grass of fast growing, that spreads
and that's also invasive.
And I remember the time when I was in the lab
there were people calling to come and cut the bamboo because that was invading a certain area.
I thought that very interesting as construction material as we use for
objects production.
The other question is that about biodegradability.
On that picture over there you can see there's a young bamboo and there's an old bamboo
And you can see... It's very clear when you get in a bamboo forest
you see the age of the bamboo, you see when it dies, when it grows, when it sprouts
and I thought interesting to use that concept in an object.
Brazil has a very good geographical condition, a very good soil, which is very propitious to grow bamboo
but my question before to start to work with bamboo was:
"Would that I'm dealing with gonna work? Would that gonna break?"
Some time was taken before to... when I've made the first bike, I was afraid to ride
No one wanna try that out, of course should be me to try.
But that didn't break, I'm still here yet.
When I saw Santos Dumont... that was an ultralight made by Santos Dumont in 1900.
Around to 200 ultralights like that were commercialized
and its entire structure was made using bamboo.
So I thought: "If he did make an ultralight, an object of such complexity
I'd make a bike using bamboo".
There are more than one thousand bamboo species
for different kinds of use, for example:
that for civil construction, the bigger one
craftworks, small objects...
By the way, that bamboo is native from Amazonia, a Brazilian native bamboo.
Bamboo is... there's a sectional cut there... it's round, it's empty inside and its external part is
the hardest, the strongest, the noblest part.
Unlike wood.
In wood, the internal part is the noblest, in bamboo is the opposite.
It's not totally straight, it's curved.
Its fibers are disposed in line, parallel to each other.
Here is a microscopically zoom on a bamboo
you can see the bamboo cells as they're going out, they're getting denser.
So, all that, that physical characteristic was a thing I'd take into consideration
when working with bamboo
or when making that adptations, that structures and everything.
Here is an example for a use of that study with bamboo.
The Biomega Bamboo Bike.
Biomega is a Danish company of bike design.
They've asked me in 2001 to work with them in the project
because their idea was to bring the natural material back to a personal object
but they didn't know how that bike would work, how to build it not risking breaking it.
That is the first draft I've got from Biomega.
That was their idea about how it would be
bamboo would be green... it'd be placed around aluminum connections
the aluminum connections...
here, isn't working...
those parts there... and the bamboo should be green then.
That's a detail from that connection, that attachment.
I've found five challenges I'd to work with.
The first one: incompatibility of materials
because were two different materials, aluminum and bamboo.
Alignment between connections.
Bamboo isn't straight, it's curved
sometimes you get a straight bamboo, but it's really hard
so you should have to make that bike to be aligned, to be pretty right
regardless the bamboo to be curved or straight.
Union or collage, they're two different kinds of material, aluminum and bamboo.
There was nothing like that in that time.
There was no adhesive in market telling that "it can glue bamboo and aluminum".
So, that was a thing I should to find out
Side efforts on bamboo tubes, as that connection was inside the bamboo
that would do the bike to vibrate and that could do the bamboo to open.
A greater exposition for the bamboo.
Because that's placed outside, that connection.
That does get more exposed to the environment.
And that'd be a problem of lost of wetness or gain of wetness
that'd change size and it'd cause the structure to fail on that part of the glue.
Up there is the original draft.
Here is the draft for my proposition
about the things to do to solve those problems
so, one thing I did was to increase the area between that aluminum connection and the bamboo
to be able to use different bamboos with different diameters
regardless to be straight or curved.
That glue would be a flexible glue
to absorb all the vibrations which that bike would be exposed to
as well thermal expansions.
There's an aluminum ring helping to hold the bamboo end
to avoid it to open
and also protects the bamboo against bad weather, against lost of wetness and gain of wetness. 122 00:10:41,821 --> 00:10:38,693 That'd be the final design.
As design done for production already
with all this idea to solve the connection done.
To finish, that bike has passed by a test stage
and in the beginning I asked to...
Biomega has talked to me: "We need to test that bike", "We need a certification".
So, I asked them: "So, let's test five bikes"
and they: "No, just one".
So, I made the bike, I knew the bike would pass in advance
but I set with them. I asked them for the bike to be tested until broke
because, as a researcher, we only get answers when something breaks.
And, that was important to me to see where its weak point was
what I could improve.
Well, in the end there was a breakage, but the machine has broken
but actually I get frustrated, because I had no answer at all
and, by the way, the factory sent the bill to Biomega.
And I hope Biomega don't send the bill to my house, now that I'm talking about that.
Well, that is it.
Thank you.