For two years, I commuted to work in New Delhi. I’d cling to the bus door until a few people got off, making room for the rest of us to squeeze in. We’d stand there, lost in daydreams, resigned to the routine. It was and still is a daily grind shared by billions, a reality beyond our control.
Given the Modernist underpinnings of my Architectural education and compounded by the fact that I grew up in Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh, I was intellectually drawn to the design of the architectural artifacts and the flows between. Six hours north of Delhi, Chandigarh had been a heroic experiment to signify post-independent modern India. The aftermath of World War II, coupled with Modernist urban ideology, prompted a radical reimagining of the cityscape as elaborate mechanisms, devoted solely to the efficient storage and movement of its essential life force: the working population. This imagination was driven by the single-most influential carrier of this life force, the automobile.
When I joined the Smart Cities group at MIT’s Media Lab, I brought with me a romanticized view shaped by my background. I lacked the necessary criticality toward car-centric cities. While we aspired to solve for the future of urban mobility, we still looked through the lens of the automobile. Logically resolving the problem into how one could compress the ground and carbon footprint of the car.
So we continued to design Folding cars, Stackable cars and many complex solutions that were intellectually exciting for a young mind until a few of us started to question the very car-centric premise to instead revisit a solution that was staring at us in right in the face. The 200 yr old bicycle.
Consider this: 80% of urban commutes cover just 6 miles or less. Using a car for such short distances is like using a sledgehammer to crack a small nut, twice a day, everyday.
The bicycle stands out as the most efficient and cleanest mode of transportation. Throughout history, it’s been an instrument of empowerment and progress.
Yet, when I committed to biking daily, tackling a moderate 3-mile uphill ride back home, this magical commute solution didn’t seem so magical anymore to someone like me looking for an easy and efficient path to work and back.
And thus the early pieces of the CLIP UX began to form by way of adapting this 200 yr old solution into designing the perfect urban commute solution for myself and the world.
A simple and temporary augmentation to the perfect bicycle for only when one needs it. Something that retains the original experience of bicycling and yet offers the flexibility to upgrade it to an e-bike whenever necessary.
A solution to empower more people around the world to ride their bikes to work without the stress of arriving sweaty or worse, exhausted.
The perfect daily commute.
