Oplossing Design

Add a constraint – plastic free – but take off all the others. This is the most whimsical design we’ve ever done. Why not go all out? And take it to Copenhagen, too.

Shown at 3DaysofDesign, June 10th-12th, 2026, where it rained HARD yet the inside stayed dry.

The bike canopy is a tent – fabric stretched over a metal frame. For the new canopy, we used literal tent poles for their low weight and quick fabrication. Next step: which textile to use? It must have tensile strength, waterproofness or repellency, some abrasion resistance, can fold/roll/stow, and accomplish all this without using plastic fibers, membranes, or coatings.

Mycoworks’s Reishi Fine Mycelium, Halley Stevensons’ waxed canvases, and Ventile fabrics achieve these requirements.

Ideally, the textile should be free of harmful finishes, coatings, & dyes/pigments as well. However, this proved out of scope for a concept project: we’re only building one. It might be hypothetically possible to get Reishi uncoated and undyed to meet the more stringent pigment requirements, but you can’t order samples of that off the website.

So which did we use? A little of all of them! We found that Reishi has some cracking issues below 20°C, but its stiffness still made it a favorite for components that needed structure. The Halley Stevensons has a nice middle stiffness, and the Ventile is the lightest, drapiest option – making it our go-to for the high-tension areas of the canopy. Each of these materials has its strengths.

Curious about what its like to BUILD with these? Check out our Materials Guides for Curious Designers.

We set out to find a drop-in replacement for the clear vinyl windows of the original canopy. Much searching, two dozen emails, and a spreadsheet later, and we were confident of one thing: this material goal is the central challenge of a plastic-free canopy design.

The very best material we found – based on origin, waterproofness, compostability, transparency, and commercial availability – is Sway’s TPSea™ Film. It is:

• Made from TPSea™ pellets and certified compostable ingredients. It is over 50% biobased. 
• TPSea™ pellets themselves are 100% biobased and majority seaweed.
• It is (TUV) certified home and industrial compostable.
• And it is “moisture resistant.”

For the new canopy, we decided to use Sway film as an optional component, where it won’t experience direct rain. Thus was the Sway moonroof born. When a passenger wants more light but no sunburn, roll the Reishi roof panel back to let the sun shine in. Bask in the pearly glow.

While we’re impatient to see the film 100% biobased (and we’re sure that’s in the works), the industry reality is that a film that is >50% biobased, derived from low-impact seaweed, and home compostable is a rarity.

We support Sway’s commitment to “Progress over perfection” and think that TPSea™ is a super intriguing material. It combines durability and a unique material character with possibilities for thermal assembly techniques like bonding. Check out our Materials Guides for Curious Designers for more.

For the skeleton of the canopy, aluminium tent poles gave us design flexibility, low weight, and packability. These are strapped onto rigid attachment points of the existing canopy (its roll cage). Then, the poles are tensioned into shape with more cotton webbing. 

Softgoods design typically evolves as it is built – we sketch, then make, then measure. It gets physical fast – below left is the toile (sacrificial mockup fabric) used to determine the fabric cutting pattern for the “real” fabric (which goes through a round of refinement, below right).

Here’s where you can see this design is not what we’d do for something to be manufactured: in the normal development process, the cotton tensioning straps would be temporary and used only during patterning. The final fabric canopy would hold the poles in shape. But for this version, we left the DFM rules by the wayside and decided to keep the tensioning straps in. Now we need a clip to keep the doorway usable.

Solid metal G hooks and even fancier, sprung clasps are great ways to avoid Velcro. Compared to Velcro and other hook & loop fasteners, their possible detractions (higher cost, weight, and rigidity) are balanced by much higher reliability, durability, and perceived quality. Where one-handed or unseen operation is necessary, clever softgoods design can use metal snaps, ladder locks, and cord cinches.

Ah, the most whimsical and difficult part. To provide a proper view out while still protecting the passenger from rain, we turned to a mechanical louvre system on the front face of the bike. Overlapping scales of Mycoworks’s Reishi Fine Mycelium shed water. This material is the perfect stiffness to hold the arches but also twist at the corners when opening and closing.

Each layer of scales is anchored to elastic webbing (cream, above) made of cotton and natural latex. The passenger can open or close the louvres by pulling on the black cotton ribbons. The ribbons are anchored by wooden buttons under each layer of scales, and by metal binder clips (possible for a 3-year-old to manipulate) inside the cabin.