My bike @ Merci Paris
The bicycle has become essential for city life a little everywhere: from Copenhagen to Amsterdam and Tokyo where the search for a better life quality has led to the birth of the Slow Bike movement; or from San Francisco to New York, with their intrepid cycling errand boys that inspired street-wear fashion and fixed gear bike models, exported also in Europe. From London, where the bicycle, a private means of transport, has supplanted the overcrowded late-coming carriages of public transport, to Paris where Velib’s success has revived the pleasure of cycling around.
The bicycle is by now not only a means of transport but a lifestyle, a rich field of research for the best international designers thanks to countless personalised solutions and the choice of accessories.
Focussing on the bicycle as a powerful expressive medium and a multi-functional object, always aware of evolutions in lifestyles, Merci Paris have gathered the very best in the history of bicycle design for the exhibition ‘My Bike –transportation dans la ville’. The models on display and related installations illustrate various aspects of the bicycle; a hobby for many, it is a useful, flexible means of transport for many others, capable of renewing itself to meet ever changing demands. A means of transport for ourselves but also to carry all that is important for our life thanks to accessories that enable us to adjust it to our lifestyle and the various situations in which we use our bike. My Bike, not only the title of an exhibition but a life philosophy. The bike made to suit our needs at best, a life companion, an extension of our self
