Winner of the sidewalks category of the CityRacks Design Competition Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve

New York City Department of Transportation (DOT) Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan and Paul Warwick Thompson, Director of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Paul White of Transportation Alternatives announced the winners of the CityRacks Design Competition.

The design of Ian Mahaffy and Maarten De Greeve (Bettlelab), based in Copenhagen, Denmark, was selected as the first-place winner in the outdoor competition that attracted over 200 entrants from around the world.  Their design was one of ten prototypes installed and tested at Astor Place since September 30.  DOT intends to use Mahaffy and De Greeve’s design as the new standard bicycle rack installed on New York City’s sidewalks. The jury also recognized second-place winner Andrew Lang and Harry Dobbs of London and third-place winner Ignacio Ciocchini of New York.  Mahaffy and De Greeve will receive a $10,000 prize courtesy of Transportation Alternatives, Dobbs and Lang a $3,000 prize and Ciocchini a $2,000 prize.

Mahaffy and De Greeve’s design reflects a modern simplicity that will greatly enhance the City’s streetscape.  The rack is round with a horizontal crossbar, evoking an abstracted bicycle tire.  Constructed of cast-metal, the design is elegant yet sturdy enough to withstand the harshest street environments.

Co-winner of the indoor category of the CityRacks Design Competition - RSVP Studios

The Jury also selected two first-place winners in the indoor competition.  RSVP Studio of New York imagined a user-friendly system with ceiling mounted bungie-cords and a grooved floor.  Its structural grid provides a secure yet flexible system that could be easily adapted to any building environment.

Co-winner of the indoor category of the CityRacks Design Competition - the team of Jessica Lee and Anthony Lau

Jessica Lee and Anthony Lau of London created a system of three modular pieces that could be installed in an unlimited number of combinations to conform to rooms large or small, tall or short.  Both will received a $5,000 prize for their work.

Our jury will soon meet to determine the winner, but we’d love to give them as much public feedback as we can. Click on the Comment on the Finalists link at the top and see the proposals, find out where to view the racks on NYC streets and tell us what you think!

If you want to see 9 out of the 10 entries all at once, just head over to Astor Place. The others will be installed at locations around the City starting around the weekend of October 11th. Keep in mind that we are installing them on the streets to test their street worthiness. If the racks are broken or missing this indicates the designs as submitted might not be tough enough for NYC. Vandals are lame, but it’s better to know the pitfalls before we start to mass produce new racks.

Enjoy and tell us what you think!

One of the many intriguing designs entered by Aleksandr Mergold of Austin + Mergold LLC

Tuesday the judges met at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum to review the entries and whittle down the hundreds of outdoor rack entries to 10 finalists.

View a selection of entries

Due to scheduling constraints of the Jury, the announcement of the winner of the in-building competition and the ten finalists for the sidewalk rack competition will now be made on July 15.  An updated sidewalk rack competition schedule is posted below:

Stage II Competitors Announced: 15 July 2008

Stage II Briefing: 22 July 2008

Stage II Question Period Ends: 4 August 2008

Stage II Answers Posted Online: 8 August 2008

Stage II Prototypes Submission Deadline: 15 September 2008

Exhibition Opening and Installation on Public Sidewalks: 30 September 2008

Awards Announced: 24 October 2008

June 9th is just around the corner. If you are pre-registered for the competition don’t forget –

Submissions should be sent or delivered to:
Zac Frank
40 Worth Street, Room 1005
New York, NY 10013

Submissions must be received at this address before 5:00 p.m. (EDT) on 9 June 2008. Competitors
assume all responsibility for insuring that their Submission arrives before the stated deadline.

The competition handbooks have been updated to make clarifications that arose out of questions submitted concerning the intellectual property provisions of the design competition materials. (Please review the handbooks and section 2.10, in particular, carefully.)

Photos of the current CityRacks on NYC streets have also been added in downloads.

Phew! We finally finished tallying up the registration forms and here’s what we’ve got:

1202 people/teams registered for the sidewalk competition

719 for the in-building competition

Including many ambitious teams who registered for both.

We’ll keep updating this blog as the competition progresses.

Pre-registration for the competition is now closed. If you registered in the past few days you should be receiving an e-mail confirmation shortly. Due to overwhelming response we’re a tiny bit behind on data entry. We have over 1,000 people and teams pre-registered for the outdoor competition and over 500 for the in-building competition. As designs start rolling in we’ll post some sneak previews here so check back often, and thanks again for your interest!

The New York City Department of Transportation (DOT), in partnership with the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the support of Google Inc. and Transportation Alternatives, is pleased to announce an international design competition for new bicycle parking for the City of New York. As part of our effort to promote cycling as a sustainable, mainstream transportation option and in keeping with the environmental goals of PlaNYC 2030, DOT is seeking to tap the creative energy of the world design and art communities for this important element of street furniture.

The purpose of the competition is to develop functional, well-designed sidewalk racks and to generate new concepts for bicycle parking inside commercial and residential buildings. These two initiatives, in addition to NYCDOT’s commitment to increasing the number of miles of bicycle facilities, providing the City’s first sheltered bike parking stations and creating more bicycle parking at transit stations, will raise the profile of bicycling as a convenient mode of transportation in New York.

Although bicycle lanes are the most noticeable element of the City’s cycling infrastructure, access to parking is also essential. Indeed, a study conducted by the Department of City Planning found that lack of access to secure bike parking was the primary reason cyclists did not ride to work. The current standard fixture for bicycle parking consists of variations of a fabricated square steel tube called the “CityRack” that is mounted on sidewalks. These fixtures occupy little space on the sidewalk and do not obstruct the flow of people or goods. New York City currently has thousands of CityRacks within its five boroughs and plans to add thousands more in the foreseeable future. The CityRack design, however, has been in use for over ten years and does not fulfill the potential to be an icon for New York City cycling.

The City intends to use the winning sidewalk rack as its new standard for bicycle parking. The design for the in-building rack will first be installed by Google in its New York City headquarters. It may also be used by City-owned buildings in the future, when possible.