When Izhar Gafni heard about a fellow who had designed a canoe entirely out of cardboard, he couldn’t shake the thought of it. Being a lover of bicycles, and being already a designer of industrial goods, he combined his love and his trade for an amazing product: The Alpha.
The sharp, streamlined creation took about three years to produce. The long timeline has to do with the fact that Ganfi was starting from scratch in a lot of ways.
“Very soon, I realized that there’s no actual know-how, how to work with the cardboard, besides making packages out of it,” says Gafni, “so I started to explore it, and then I figured out a lot of things out of it. ”
It was an arduous process where engineers told Gafni that his design was impossible. And yet, Gafni is now working with a company to raise funds to manufacture an adult and child version of the bicycle.
If he’s able to put his ideas into production, we could be looking at a truly mindful product: a cheap and sustainable bike.
The bike costs about $9 to make. Factoring in the labor costs, the bike would retail for $60, according to Green Prophet.
What’s your impression of Gafni’s creation? Is this a mindful product? Would you purchase it?
[Mindful hat tip to Fast Company and Design Taxi]
