Alérion and Arvak Bicycles

By Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

Alérion and Arvak bicycle with streamlined design in a wooded area

Detail of Alérion and Arvak bicycle with carved wooden wing design by Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

Carved wooden bicycle frame resembling feathers by Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

Carved wooden bicycle frame by Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

Detail of Alérion bicycle frame with carved wooden feather design

Hands in workshop using tools to craft Alérion and Arvak bicycles

Artisan crafting bicycle frame by Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

Overview

Crafted by the French duo of Master Worodworker Till Breitfuss and Industrial Designer Paule Guerin, these two bikes were first showcased at Paris's 1.618 Sustainable Luxury Show in 2014 under the Keim brand.

What makes these bikes perfectly unique is their craftmanship. Each frame is constructed from stack white ash veneers soaked in a bio-based expoxy, compressed under vacuum and then hand-shaped and sealed for weather protection. They indeed are artisinal creations.

Creating each frame takes approximately a month (around 35 to 40 hours) and involves as many as 50 layers of ash to produce the 7.5kg frame size.

With only a limited number made, these beautiful creations do command a premium price of $11,000 USD. Though really, for the craft and effort involved in their creation, they are pure art in motion.

Till and Paule:
“The Alérion is the symbiosis of two approaches with the wood, and technique for a radical poetic and sensitive towards the other. The bike becomes a sculpture to be admired and delicious transgression, on which you sit! It takes us into a world of mythological and fantastic and dreamlike hippogriffs Pegasi. The Arvak is the culmination of a search for the essential bicycle. His project with cable monocoque frame is a composite of 24 layers of laminated vacuum bonded with a resin of biological origin. The orientation of the fibers is optimized to take advantage of the unique characteristics of this species. The bike is equipped with high-quality technical components, in particular highlighting the essential carbon wheels Corima.”

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Transport

Alérion and Arvak Bicycles

By Till Breitfuss and Paule Guerin

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