This motorcycle is made from countertops

Designer Michael Young penned this concept bike after seeing a collection of Luigi Colani designs, then convincing Dupont that what they really needed to show off the possibilities of Corian was a motorcycle. You see, Michael was tasked with creating a concept showroom and a range of products to highlight potential applications of the space age material. Corian was originally developed in the 1960s as an artificial bone replacement, but has since found favor in kitchens, where its non-porous nature makes it an ideal stain-free granite replacement. Could artificial stone really be used to make a functional motorcycle? Of course not.

“Quite honestly the project was most about having a client willing to let me do what ever I wanted,” Michael told us. “I designed the Corian concept store and told them i would like to model a bike for fun. I did a few concepts for Kymco years back that never got built and I collected a few old cars, so its a little in the blood.”

“The material is so no good to make a bike out of but good to make a study, they obliged , it was a very casual project, though deep in my heart i would love to work as part of a team designing some real bikes.”

“It is just my take on how I would like a bike to look, no deeper message than that. I was looking at some Coloni pieces at a private collection before that, which gave me a buzz and guess I just felt like giving it a go. You are right on the electric bike aspect as it’s more a take on a bike as a product than a machine which suites the skills of the studio very well.”

We like Motolima because it subverts traditional motorcycle design archetypes, drooping towards the tail where most bikes finish in a raised peak and presenting soft, friendly curves where contemporary production bikes are all hard edges. The geometric hexagon pattern, which is sort of a Corian identifier, lends a sense of solidity to parts that are typically plastic and the stone texture of the seat and “engine” are also somewhat subversive. Michael tells us he wasn’t influenced by either the Osmos Rolling Bird or the NONOBJECT Nucleus (in fact, we showed him the first pictures of the Osmos he’d seen), so any resemblance is a coincidence likely caused by product designers applying similar influences to designing a motorcycle.

Michael Young