Photograph by Dan Saelinger
If you had asked Rob Forbes a few years ago to recommend a good city bike, he would have said, "Get a used bike from the 1960s." Today, Forbes, who founded furniture retailer Design Within Reach and now heads the design shop Studio Forbes, would reply: Buy mine.
Forbes's Public D is less revolutionary than evolutionary. U.S. bicycles are mostly based on racing and mountain bikes. But Forbes drew on Britain's 19th-century "double diamond," the ancestor of the modern European city bike. He tweaked the classic, reducing the tire size and turning the handlebars up for a more ergonomically friendly ride.
The biggest change was the frame's material. "In Holland, bikes are big old lunkers. They're, like, 45 pounds," Forbes says. "We had to bring that down. Our topography tends to be more varied than their flatlands, and bikers here often have to carry their bikes upstairs.
If you had asked Rob Forbes a few years ago to recommend a good city bike, he would have said, "Get a used bike from the 1960s." Today, Forbes, who founded furniture retailer Design Within Reach and now heads the design shop Studio Forbes, would reply: Buy mine.
Forbes's Public D is less revolutionary than evolutionary. U.S. bicycles are mostly based on racing and mountain bikes. But Forbes drew on Britain's 19th-century "double diamond," the ancestor of the modern European city bike. He tweaked the classic, reducing the tire size and turning the handlebars up for a more ergonomically friendly ride.
The biggest change was the frame's material. "In Holland, bikes are big old lunkers. They're, like, 45 pounds," Forbes says. "We had to bring that down. Our topography tends to be more varied than their flatlands, and bikers here often have to carry their bikes upstairs.
- 6/21/2010
- by Jeff Chu
- Fast Company
Photograph by Jonny Valiant
Out Of Fashion: "It throws people off," says ousted CEO Ray Brunner of his white-stocking style. So did his controversial reign. Then-ceo Brunner said that Dwr Kitchen was ahead of plan. That "plan" must have been extraordinarily conservative. Only one person purchased a Dwr kitchen in 2009. | Photograph by Clay Patrick McBride
Retailer Design Within Reach helped create a new appreciation for the modernist aesthetic. With design more mainstream than ever, why is the company in such dire straits?
Well-founded Fears "Dwr was a profitable, audacious business until the evil forces of mass-market retailing took over," says Dwr founder Rob Forbes. | Photograph by Clay Patrick McBride
The Wigan Garden Spade is a thing of verdant beauty. Its hunter-green steel and sunny ash-wood handle evoke the pastoral fantasias of an aspiring gentleman farmer -- a dwarf maple in your yard, perhaps, around the base of which you can,...
Out Of Fashion: "It throws people off," says ousted CEO Ray Brunner of his white-stocking style. So did his controversial reign. Then-ceo Brunner said that Dwr Kitchen was ahead of plan. That "plan" must have been extraordinarily conservative. Only one person purchased a Dwr kitchen in 2009. | Photograph by Clay Patrick McBride
Retailer Design Within Reach helped create a new appreciation for the modernist aesthetic. With design more mainstream than ever, why is the company in such dire straits?
Well-founded Fears "Dwr was a profitable, audacious business until the evil forces of mass-market retailing took over," says Dwr founder Rob Forbes. | Photograph by Clay Patrick McBride
The Wigan Garden Spade is a thing of verdant beauty. Its hunter-green steel and sunny ash-wood handle evoke the pastoral fantasias of an aspiring gentleman farmer -- a dwarf maple in your yard, perhaps, around the base of which you can,...
- 11/27/2009
- by Jeff Chu
- Fast Company
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