Gold Vehicle, Mobility and Transportation Design · 2020
Sada Bike Hubless Foldable Bike
- A' Design Award 2020 Gold Winner in Vehicle, Mobility and Transportation Design
- Awarded April 15, 2020
- CLIENT: Adler Group
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 60,624
- Verification code 3AB73454ED · Verify this award
About Sada Bike Hubless Foldable Bike
Sada Bike is a hubless folding bicycle with 26 inch wheels. The large wheels support a comfortable riding posture similar to that of a standard bicycle. Each wheel is held at three points: the front points are set in the fender structure, while the rear points sit inside the rim. A chain transmits motion to a lower wheel, which transfers torque to the rear rim. The frame turns around a single central fulcrum, so the whole structure closes with one movement into a shape close to the size of an umbrella. The folded bicycle can be carried on the shoulder or moved as a trolley.
Positioned at the intersection of industrial design innovation and sculptural aesthetics, Sada Bike Hubless Foldable Bike by Gianluca Sada represents a remarkable reimagining of the conventional bicycle form through the radical elimination of traditional wheel hubs and spokes. The work emerges from a lineage of design thinking that privileges essential form over accumulated convention, suggesting affinities with both early twentieth-century functionalist principles and contemporary explorations of minimal material deployment. The technical achievement manifests most dramatically in the spokeless wheel construction, where the tire rolls along an internal guide mechanism, creating visual voids that transform purely functional components into contemplative apertures framing space itself. The chromatic restraint of polished aluminum against cognac leather establishes a dialogue between industrial precision and artisanal warmth, a material conversation that elevates the utilitarian object toward the aesthetic register of sculpture. Compositional intelligence reveals itself in the flowing curves of the frame structure, which describe elegant transitions between structural necessity and visual poetry, each bend and junction calibrated to serve both mechanical function and formal harmony. The presentation within an architectural context of soaring concrete forms and diffused daylight positions the work as an object worthy of sustained visual attention, inviting consideration of how innovation in personal mobility might simultaneously advance practical utility and aesthetic experience. The viewer might contemplate how this reimagining of a familiar typology challenges assumptions about what bicycles must look like while honoring the essential relationship between human body and mechanical extension that has defined cycling since its nineteenth-century origins.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The SadaBike have 5 strategic points:
1) Hubless bike.
This means: Innovative Design and very good ergonomics and comfort.
2) Hubless and foldable bike:
It has a special fulcrum in the center, all the frame folds, into a compact shape, similar to an umbrella.
3) Foldable with a single movement.
4) Portable on Shoulder:
The small size has the advantage of carrying the bike on the shoulder.
5) Portable as a Trolley:
The backpack presents a central hinge that allows the expansion in the trolley mode. - Dimensions & Packaging
- Sada Bike measurements:
In «open version» Sada Bike is like a «normal» 26 inch bike: 1640mm; 980mm; 530mm
The dimension of only the frame, is like an umbrella and included rims, overall measurements are: 700mm; 600mm; 280mm - Tags
- Hubless, Foldable, Trolley, Umbrella Bike
- Production Technology
- The parts of this bike are in aluminum alloy (7075 Ergal) made by CNC process. The next prototype and the production will be made in Ergal and carbon fiber.
- Design Challenge
- The bicycle without spokes was a challenge between innovation and design. The search for the perfect circle and the study of the laws of physics, yet the commitment, perseverance, with a certain amount of obstacles and falls have made it possible to operate the circle without rays, without constraint to the hub .. and again ... the search of technical and industrial partner, led me to finalize an essential design with extreme innovation.
- Project Duration
- The main exhibitions are:
SMAU Torino (Torino Italy 05/2014); Napoli Bike Festival (Napoli Italy 09/2014); Forum del Design (Milano Italy 10/2014); TEDx Bologna (Bologna Italy 10/2014); Bike to the future: Design Museum Gent (Belgium 10/2016), Bloomfield Science Museum (Jerusalem Israel 05/2017), Universum Bremen (Germany 04/2018), Citta della Scienza (Napoli Italy 4/2019), Science and Technology Museum (Ottawa Canada 04/2020), Franklin Institute (Philadelphia USA 04/2021). - Operation Flow
- The frame is composed mainly of 4 parts similar to a scissor front and a rear. Each wheel is supported in 3 points: the front ones are inserted in the fender structure, while the rear ones are allocated inside the rim.
The bending system has a central fulcrum around which the front and rear parts of the structure and allows it to close the whole frame in a very compact way.
The Sada Bike has a change in the lower wheel that transmits the motion, which allows multiplying the speed of 3 times. The chain then transmits the motion to the lower wheel that transfers torque to the rear rim. - Research
- The result of the project is a 26 inch foldable bicycle with a minimum size when folded (the frame dimension is barely the size of an umbrella) for hand-transport.
Sada Bike, despite the sizes of its wheels and the total absence of hubs and spokes, when folded, is the lightest and least cumbersome foldable bike on the market as it can be transported in an elegant trolley. Other foldable bikes have tiny wheels and frame enhancing manageability at the expense of stability and safety. - Inspiration
- Demanding mobility-related service has its consequences on society: street congestion of metropolitan hubs is the everyday challenge commuters have to face and it is a source and stress and delays.
«You never change things by fighting against the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the old model obsolete.» R.Buckminster Fuller
Promoting and enabling virtuous behaviors for smart mobility, intermodality, sustainability for the environment are the values driving Sada Bike - Image Credits
- Image Frozen Light studio
- Patents
- Patented No. PCT EP2011 878
Italy EP2509854A1, Europe EP2509854B1, USA US20120319377
1st Classified for: Idea TO; The best innovative thesis 2010
Thesis awarded at 55 Congress of order of Engineers of Italy
Project selected for 200 Young talent of Italy
Event held by the Minister of Youth, Rome 17-20 November 2010
Colors of Sada Bike Hubless Foldable Bike
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