 |
| Greensboro's Main Street - boarded up shops - but the barber is still in business |
Deep in
Alabama's rural Black belt, in Hale County, is a little town called Greensboro,
once an important cotton growing area with a high proportion of slaves to the
white population. Later it was a bastion of the segregationists (and quite
possibly those sentiments are still alive among some residents). Today, a large
number of the descendants of the slaves live in poverty, often in shacks with
no running water or sanitation.
Over the
years, with the growth of out-of-town shopping malls, new highways shifting
passing traffic away from the town, the centre of Greensboro has fallen into
decay. Shops are closed and boarded, the antebellum homes around the centre are
faded and peeling, and hardly a soul is to be seen on Main Street.
Pictured left is Lance Rake with his prototype hexagonal frame of bamboo strips
Into this
sad situation comes a non-profit, self-help group aiming to revitalise the
community and to assist the poorest members of the community into simple but
modern and sanitary homes. With volunteers, schemes which help with finance in
exchange for work, and a basic house design, HERO is transforming the lives of
folks whose homes are without the facilities which we take for granted - and
which one might expect everyone in the USA enjoys.
In addition,
HERO, which stands for "Hale Empowerment and Revitalisation Organisation”,
under its executive director Pam Dorr, has launched a number of ventures
including the Pie Lab, a cafe in the town centre offering "food and
conversation".
So
where's the bike angle? Growing a short way from the centre of town is plenty
of bamboo planted in the late 1800s. In 2009, as part of the Hero project, a
team designed and began construction of cycles using bamboo as the frame. Now,
under the guidance of Lance Rake, a professor of industrial design, in one of
the empty shops in the main street Herobike builds and sells a range of street
and touring bikes. The bamboo "tubes" are bound together with carbon
fibre and, says Lance, offer a comfortable ride similar to that of steel
frames.
 |
| Shop window model |
He has since
begun working on a frame made of strips of bamboo bound together with glass
fibre in a hexagonal cross section. Lance is also experimenting with weaving
the bamboo strips to make a skateboard and an electrobike. All these products
are using simple technology and locally available materials.
 |
| Made by the Kansas University students - the bamboo running bike |
In
January 2016 a group of design students from Kansas were doing a practical
exercise at the Hero hq, building "running bikes" for children and
using the bamboo strip technique for a wave board.
Most of the Hero bikes are bought on line and are also available in kit
form. Workshops are run where you can, with guidance, build your own bamboo bike.
Not only are the results practical functioning bikes, they are also a novelty
which is contributing to the community effort in this struggling little town.
Find your Hero Bike here: http://www.herobike.org
More about the Hero project: http://www.herohousing.org
 |
| Kansas University students at work in the Herobike workshop |
 |
| Bonding the joints |
 |
| Bamboo drying in the January sun outside the Herobike workshop in the Greensboro main street |
No comments:
Post a Comment