Bike Apple

Alphen aan den Rijn NL –

In the Netherlands, there is certainly no shortage of bicycles. Around train stations, where commuters leave for work, hundreds of bikes are parked every day. That there must be a way to organise this in a more orderly and attractive way was the idea of architect and former KC director Wytze Patijn. Inspired by a surrealistic cartoon he saw in a daily newspaper, he designed a steel structure in the form of a peeled apple. The provincial town of Alphen aan den Rijn found the object exciting enough to make it the landmark of its renovated Station Square. It also solved the issue of randomly parked bikes.

Recognizable object
The Bike Apple can host 970 bicycles in a structure of 15.5 meters high with a diameter of 27.5 meters. The object appears to have a simple design, but, on closer inspection, no single detail of this three-dimensional structure appears the same. The Bike Apple was awarded the Dutch Staalprijs in 2012.