February 26, 2008
Design Project Build
On Saturday, April 5, 2008 stop by Rembrandt Yard and check out Design Project Build. From 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm take part in the a bicycle round-up of festivities. Community Cycles will be presenting demonstrations and tuning workshops throughout the day, and local artist Bruce Campbell will be using salvaged materials to develop on site bike rack prototypes. Our BoulderSpace team will be here to answer any Bike Rack Design Competition questions you may have. See ya there!
February 19, 2008
Bike Rack Design Competition: Call for Sponsorship
After beginning our preliminary planning in the fall of 2007, we are now ready to open The Bike Rack Design Competition to potential partners and sponsors. If you are interested in participating (individuals and/or businesses) in the competition and events leading up to to its finale, please click on: Bike Rack Design Competition: Call for all Sponsorship
In order to encourage partner involvement, without limiting creativity to this community-wide project, our partnership letter was developed in an open format. We are looking for partners to become involved at the level they feel they can best assist with the competition. We have provided recommendations; however, our partners are not limited in their participation. In order to truly incorporate community partnership, we look forward to your ideas.
For further details, please contact Rebecca Lewis: rl[@]sorbeliving.com; 720.771.0528.
January 25, 2008
UPDATE! Bike Rack Design Competition
As with all things bureaucratic, an idea of this scope takes time. And so, thanks in advance for your patience, as we’ve been working on this for quite a while.
Over the past two months, we’ve been working out the details for the Boulder Bike Rack Design Competition with the City of Boulder. This past Wednesday, January 23, 2008, representatives of Boulderspace met with 12 different individuals from City departments and Boulder affiliations to discuss the bike rack installation options and design guidelines. Overall, the feedback from the different departments was positive and informative.
As expected, this competition will involve extensive discussions, planning, and processes from various City departments. Some guideline and design elements discussed at the meeting include long-term cost-effective maintenance, ‘vandal-proof’ materials, stability, size and positioning requirements (to pedestrian path and road), safety issues, and installment options.
Given the complexities involved, we’ve decided to break the competition into two distinct phases:
Phase One
Participants enter their designs/submissions from now through June 9, 2008. These submissions can be creative, artistic, and unique designs and materials with no boundaries or restrictions. The idea here is to cast a wide net and to generate a wide and varied set of possibilities.
Phase Two
The second phase of the competition will begin in June, after the entries from Phase I have been judged. All designs from Phase I will be entered into Phase 2. The purpose of this phase is to select a bike rack design that will fit into the guidelines to be determined through collaboration with the city. This second set of criteria will challenge designers to use practical guidelines and parameters for potential public installment in the “high need” areas within the city limits. We’re collaborating with the city to come up with a definitive set of these guidelines, and we’ll post them here when they’ve been approved.
As this process will take some time, Phase II of the competition is still in the works.
October 22, 2007
COMPETITION GUIDELINES AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD
Now accepting submissions for the Bike Rack Design Competition. Download this .pdf for guidelines, submission instructions and pages to sketch your ideas.
October 10, 2007
DESIGN COMPETITION HAS LEGS
The Boulder community, no surprise, is really excited about the Bike Rack Design Competition. We handed out hundreds of flyers about the competition at last weekend’s Fall Fest, where we fielded questions from enthused residents about the competition and preliminary guidelines. As noted below, the City of Boulder has yet to sign-off on the idea, but we’re hoping to meet with them by the beginning of next week to look at our options.In the meantime, after much deliberation after the response we’ve received, we’ve decided to split the competition into 2 components:1. The original “design a bike rack that can be mounted atop the recently beheaded parking meter poles” idea. (Again, this is pending city approval with guidelines to be published here when we have them)2. The “free range” competition, where participants can design a bike rack free of any creative restraints. The bike racks submitted in this category would be intended for installation on private property (residential or commercial), not on City of Boulder right-of-way areas.We are soliciting partnerships from local businesses, in the hopes of providing a strong community backing for this idea. PRELIMINARY GUIDELINESWe’re working on a set of guidelines (which will include contact information, size limitations, acceptable materials, safety information, deadline for submission, etc.) for the competition that will be available here as a downloadable pdf. We’d like to post pictures, scans, or sketches of designs as we receive them, so begin thinking along those lines as you conceptualize your design: you’ll want to provide us with a digital image of the design, whether that be a vector drawing in pdf format, a scan of a pencil sketch, or a photograph of a physical model. If you don’t have access to a computer, we’ll also be providing a physical address where submissions can be mailed.
We will continue to post updates here; in the meantime, put on your thinking caps and get creative!
October 2, 2007
Boulder recently joined a growing number of cities across the country who have converted their coin-operated parking meter systems to a newer, solar-powered “pay & display” system. City crews began removing the old parking meter heads in late August and have begun installing the new kiosks. Once the old meters were removed, we noticed just how many of the parking meter poles were left standing, solitary and unattractive, up and down Boulder’s downtown streets. As dedicated bicyclists, we immediately felt the loss of the old meters, as they previously provided a quick and easy way to lock one’s bike when riding downtown.Bicyclists in other cities (click here to read an account from Berkeley, California, and here to ready an account from Arlington, Virgina) have felt the sting of similar removals, which made us wary when it began happening here. However, after some inquiries with City of Boulder officials, we discovered that the City has already purchased some basic bike racks designed to be installed on top of the old parking meters. Their purchase of 125 bike racks, (similar to the one shown here) at least initially, was for the downtown area only. And there are many more parking meter poles in town, and no immediate plans for their use.So, we here at Boulderspace have decided to host a bike rack design competition. We’ve begun preliminary discussions with the City, and have not, at the time of this writing (October 2, 2007) received official confirmation that we can proceed… we have, however, received positive feedback from the City, as such an effort would go a long way toward building community and filling an expressed need.Details of the competition are being drawn-up, so we will post them here once they’ve been finalized. The basic idea is that the rack should be designed to fit safely and securely over the old meter poles. We’re still soliciting sponsorship from businesses and organizations in Boulder, in the hopes that we can establish an unbiased jury to judge the submissions. We’re also hopeful that our co-sponsors can offer a series of prizes to award the top submissions. Ultimately, the grand prize would be to have the winning submission produced and installed.
For the time being, if you’re interested in submitting a design entry, or if you’re interested in co-sponsoring some element of this competition, please email us, and enter “bike rack competition” as the subject. We’ll post updates regarding the competition as we receive more information from the city and as we develop the final guidelines. Happy pedaling …
As an aside, I like the idea of Denver’s “Parking Meters for Homeless”, which uses old meters to collect donations for the homeless http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Parking+Meters+For+Homeless%22
I think that this is one of the best ideas I have heard in a long time. I love that Boulder Space is going to work with the city to reuse our headless parking meters. I also think that it is great that each “bike rack” will be unique. Great idea.
We have been having overwhelming support for the bike rack designs.
As designs are submitted, they will be posted for BoulderSpace to view.
This is going to be great……………..
Give me an old cool bicycle, and I’ll ride around the city for days.
Perfect for Boulder. Now, when will an entrepreneur start Boulder Bike-docks (Bikedox)?
It’s very important that bike racks be compatible with handicap or limited-mobility people using the sidewalks or parking cars and crossing the curb to the sidewalk. The judging panel should also include one or more handicap advocates to provide expertise in this area.
My wife recently became a limited-mobility person, and right after a snowstorm she tried to park in a kiosk zone. She ended up getting a ticket because it was too hard to get to the kiosk and back before beginning her errand. Add an obstruction in the form of a nifty-looking but overbearing bike rack, and even more people will simply abandon the idea of shopping downtown. That’s why I hope handicap-friendliness will be a significant point-scoring criterion.