ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the ways in which bicycle design connects with a range of factors; how external forces may shape reinterpretations of bicycle design, and how bicycle design, in turn, may be used to try to shape the external world. It explores two historical cases to show how bicycles, as design objects, are entangled with practices and identities: Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and England in the 1960s and 1970s. In the first case, design is used to reproduce and reinforce a dominant political ideology through reinterpretation rather than innovation. Here the bicycle allows new connections to be made between state and citizen. In the second case, design innovation is employed to challenge dominant ideologies of mobility: bicycles are used to connect citizens to new mobility practices. The chapter considers broader theoretical perspectives within which these case studies are situated.
