Invited by the Aldrich Museum, a modern-art collection, to participate in its “Bike Rides” program, we created a temporary bicycle rack. The design started with a manufactured artifact—the cotter pin—as a formal detail.
Just as a cotter pin secures into place a bicycle’s crankshaft, so our cotter-pin rack secures into place the bicycle itself. The bent-metal form of the pin is exaggerated in size, then doubled as an X and repeated as a series, creating a bank for two to four bikes. Working closely with metal artisan Peter Kirkiles, we conceived of the rack as a wry piece of site furniture that sets the stage for something to happen.