sunstar bicycles, design & looking towards the future . . .

sunstar & pratt id bicycle workshop 2007:

in the summer of 2006 in copenhagen denmark, i met with rieko ito (of ixi s.r.l., located in milan, italy), to discuss the possibility of a year long industry-sponsored mobility project with pratt’s id students. rieko, with her counterparts in japan at sunstar, were interested developing a new conceptual model for hybrid bicycles (that is, bicycles with electric motor assists and battery packs) for the united states. the project was to the dream of rieko’s father, takayuki ito. it was agreed upon that the project would be divided into three rounds and jonathan thayer & noah king would work directly with the rest of the id faculty as well as all the id students for the entire project. the spring semester of 2007 (round one): initial form and visual intelligence development, using three dimensional abstraction. all sophomores juniors and 1st year graduate students would be invited to participate in this exploration of rough abstract forms models to identifiable objects. the final deliverable would be developmental concept models. at the end of this session approximately 20 students would be invited to continue into the next round. the summer of 2007 (round two): conceptual and strategy evaluation. selection and refinement based on sunstar’s marketing input. development of (most likely) 1/5th scale models. approximately 15 student would be involved in this round. autumn semester of 2007 (round three): selection with sunstar and the id faculty advisors of the final development of the most promising ideas (about a dozen, but possibly less). design engineering, manufacturing feasibility, final renderings / drawings and final presentation models. final critique to sunstar’s executives and review. all of the id students, moving forward from any round, would, in general, be given a monetary award for their involvement in that round. the intellectual property would reside with each student at the end of the workshop. here is a brief visual overview from this exciting bicycle workshop with takayuki ito, rieko ito and everybody from sunstar . . .

sunstar & pratt id bicycle workshop preliminary critique,
february 2007

sunstar & pratt id bicycle workshop, research information,
september 2007

sunstar & pratt id bicycle workshop, final critique,
december 2007