Endless green cycle
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Visitors ride bicycles inside the Denmark Pavilion. [China Daily] |
A few accidents aside, the use of bicycles by visitors to the Denmark Pavilion has proved a big hit, Matt Hodges reports.
The Denmark Pavilion was said to be nearly as difficult to design as the Bird's Nest stadium in Beijing because of its lack of supporting pillars, and navigating it by bicycle is no mean feat either - as many Chinese have discovered.
Arup, the consulting structural engineers who helped build both the Beijing Olympics National Stadium and the Denmark Pavilion, have created a continuous loop around the pavilion that incorporates a 300-meter bicycle lane and an atrium housing Copenhagen's famous The Little Mermaid statue.
Denmark decided to bring hundreds of Copenhagen's city bikes to the Expo to enhance its green message and be in keeping with the Expo's motto of "Better City, Better Life".
This makes for a refreshing change from many of the pavilions, which rely heavily on audiovisual gimmicks. However, the problems that Denmark has encountered, such as spills and grazed knees, suggest that banning bikes, skateboards and Segways from the Expo Garden was just as inspired. (One foreigner had somehow managed to get a Segway into the Expo Garden on May 9 and was clearly enjoying cruising around).
The main problem for the locals has been getting to grips with the foot brake, which requires you to back pedal to stop - a rare function in this part of the world.
"We have an average of five people who fall off a bike each day, but no serious accidents yet," Lene Winther, the head of media at the pavilion said. But this number pales in comparison to attendance, which is averaging 20,000 a day.
"It's a bit dangerous, because the Chinese are used to having hand brakes, but that's why we (insist they wear) the helmets," said pavilion director Stine Guldmann.
The pavilion put its foot down on May 8, seven days after the Expo opened. Bike riding was temporarily halted while handbrakes were installed and the bikes were back in action on May 11.
Expo organizers toyed with the idea of giving bike-rental companies free reign during the event, then rejected it as unsound given the logistics of having up to half a million people a day in a site just over 3 square kilometers in area.
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