Design Challenge.
(Photo © Elly Blue)
Organizers of the Oregon Manifest have announced they’re moving to a biennial format and scaling back the event to focus on the Constructor’s Design Challenge. The event, which began as a handmade bike show over one weekend in 2008 and grew into a six-week series of events last year, will take place again in 2011.
Jocelyn SyCip, the director of the non-profit Oregon Manifest, said they plan to focus efforts on the Constructor’s Design Challenge, an event that’s part technical trials and part bike show. “We see tremendous potential for the Constructor’s Design Challenge to become an international showcase for the craft and culture of hand built bicycles. This is clearly an event with staying power deserving of greater cultivation.”
The two years between events will “provide bicycle frame builders a generous production window to present the best design solutions to the design criteria,” added SyCip.
29 builders from seven states entered last year’s Constructor’s Design Challenge. The bikes were judged for utility as transportation vehicles and were ridden through an epic road test before being displayed for admiring crowds in a storefront in Portland’s Pearl District (for full coverage of the Design Challenge, browse the nine stories we posted about it). A coffee table book that documents the event is currently in production.
Check out OregonManifest.com for more information.