Fuseproject have been thinking, designing and refining this bike for months, in search for the perfect mode of transportation to do everything in our local neighborhood.
The project emerged out of The Oregon Manifest design challenge, and brings together a collaboration between a custom bike builder and a global design houses to rethink bicycle design for a new generation. Fuseproject partnered with local bike builder, Sycip, to create the ultimate utility bicycle.
The fuseproject bicycle is named LOCAL. At its core, LOCAL is just that: the perfect Neighborhood bike. With our LOCAL, we visit friends down the street; we ride to shops in the vicinity such as our favorite hardware store, we drop-off the kids at the school nearby, we grab a picnic and take the whole family (including surfboards) to the beach.
Over the years, as our lives have become more complicated and full of stuff to take to work or play, our traditional bicycles became less practical. So we designed the LOCAL to address the needs of our daily lives...and to bring back the fun of riding around the neighborhood.
LOCAL is the bike version of the practical pick-up truck: transportation you can live with – it’s utility and function isn’t limited to carrying a laptop or a sixpack. The sturdy, flexible front platform carries the groceries, surfboards, lumber and kids creating an ideal vehicle for a self-?powered life. Inspired by the pick-?up truck, a uniquely American vehicle that roamed the countryside in the same way that the LOCAL bike roams the streets. This is not a specialized commuter getting you from point A to B, it’s a real workhorse that you can use for nearly anything.
For all who have wanted to use a bike for their daily lives and have considered the concept too impractical, we focused on designing a useful tool for a local life, not just fulfilling the needs of one type of individual or grafting on to an existing bike. To address those needs we challenged the existing definition of the “cargo bike”. Existing cargo bikes are large and heavy, or extended front designs that are intimidating to new riders and potentially disconcerting for carrying precious cargo like kids or pets.
To realize this idea, we solved for load placement, steering options, ways to secure all kinds of cargo and relieve the hassles usually associated with taking a bike out for the day. We integrated some key elements in the bike: locking, lighting, bags and even music with our wireless JAMBOX speaker! These are things that we would otherwise have to carry separately, but now LOCAL has a place for each. Finally, for a safe, easy and clean grease-?free experience, we are using a Shimano "Alfine" internal hub with 11 gears with front and rear hydraulic disk brakes.
So go ahead and explore your neighborhood, we are doing the same with ours. And if we find cool stuff out there, now we can always bring it home with us on our LOCAL.
