Project Overview

Flat Raq is a folding bike rack designed for temporary use at outdoor events and public spaces. It's innovative lock and fold mechanism allows the rack to be folded down for storage when not in use and easily set up by a single person. It is fully designed, developed and manufactured in Australia

Organisation

Ben-Tovim Design

Team

Jonathan Ben-Tovim- Industrial Design, Project Management
Nikolas Greig- Industrial Design

Project Brief

The brief centered around a gap in the market for a bike rack that can be used by councils and organisations to add extra bike parking capacity at events when there is not enough permanent bike parking.
The rack had to be robust enough to hold a large quantity of safely locked up bikes, combined with the capacity to be folded down for easy storage. The folding mechanism needed to be simple and easy enough for one person to quickly operate by themselves.
To allow for maximum adaptability, we also wanted the design to be modular. This would mean that the racks could come in a variety of sizes depending on the requirements of the customer.
We also aimed to have the rack entirely made by local fabricators with the capacity for customers to have custom colours and signage to fit their organisation infrastructure.

Project Innovation/Need

From our research there was no existing bike rack product that was robust enough to lock bikes to in public that could be folded down for storage. Our product was able to solve this problem.
The locking mechanism that allows for the racks to be folded down also doubles as the modular connector to allow the racks to be connected in links. This means the racks could be set up in 4, 6, 10 or 20 bike capacity arrangements.
The folding and locking mechanism was completely designed and engineered from the ground up for this product. It has a provisional patent covering the innovative features.

Design Challenge

The challenge was in solving the mechanical problems for the folding mechanism without compromising the performance of the rack for bike parking, whilst still creating a simple and elegant final form. This was followed by the challenge in sourcing fabricators that could deliver a product at a reasonable cost with the specs required.

Sustainability

Flat Raq is all about encouraging and supporting cycling, which we believe to be the most sustainable form of transport for an urban population. We are passionate about cycling as a primary mode of transport for Australia. This means having the best facilities so riding to events and public places is as convenient as possible. We observed that often at busy events there was not enough spaces to park bikes. We simply aimed to address this problem.