Bicycle Architecture Biennale celebrates bike-friendly urban design

Leave it to Amsterdam to devote an entire architecture biennale to bikes. The cycle-friendly city recently opened its second Bicycle Architecture Biennale, and it’s an expansive look at how bike-friendly architecture can lead to more thoughtfully designed cities.

Curated by Dutch studio Next Architects, the exhibition features 15 projects from nine countries, all sharing different solutions for making cities more amenable to cyclists. Some, like the Netherlands’ Utrecht Central Station that has 13,500 bike parking spots, are part of a robust cycling infrastructure. Others, like the five-mile aerial bike lane in Xiamen, China, are just the beginning of a bigger plan to make cycling a central part of a city’s transportation plan.

Ma Weiwei via Designboom

Luc Daelemans via Designboom

Some of the projects like a bike path that cuts through a water in Limburg, Belgium, or the curving Ölhafen Bridge in Raunheim, Germany, are gorgeous pieces of architecture that almost double as art. The goal of the Biennale is to not just showcase clever solutions, but also present case studies that demonstrate how designing with cyclists in mind often leads to more livable cities in general.

The exhibition is on show in Amsterdam through June 21 and then heads on a global tour of “major architectural and citymaking events”. Learn more about this year’s event here.

SPADE via Designboom