A plastic-free cargo bike canopy for growing kids. A challenge for the Oplossing team. Built on Bullitt.
Going to Copenhagen 3DaysofDesign 2026. “Make this Moment Matter.”
This moment matters.
Kids grow and learn every day. A taller cargo canopy can’t wait forever to be built – before you know it, your kid would rather ride their own bike.
Like a kindergartener, materials science is taking off the training wheels of petroleum-derived chemistry – learning to work with materials that come from all kinds of sources and last only as long as necessary.
These materials are imperfect, unknown. It is tempting to take a back seat and wait for them to be de-risked on some other project. But you gotta use them to know them to improve them.
So this moment matters – the time to build the taller canopy was last season, and the plastic-alternative materials are constantly changing.
Take a dip into the unknown with us. Don’t worry, we’ve scouted the way and there are nifty red seatbelts.
Why a cargo bike canopy? Why plastic-free? Why does it look like that?
Add a constraint – plastic free – but take off all the others. This is the most whimsical, unmanufacturable design we’ve ever done. Why not go all out? And take it to Copenhagen, too.
To be revealed at 3DD, June 10th-12th, 2026.
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3DaysofDesign, Copenhagen
Materials.
We are CMF engineers, after all.
Follow along as the story is revealed, design choice by design choice.
Waterproof textiles. No films, no plastics. How do we stay 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.
(Next up) Seeing out – transparent films.
Design.
Softgoods, hard parts, how it all comes together.
(Next up) Structure and development process.
Coming soon!
Oplossing Design 