Gearing Up

Toward the Bike-Friendly City

The exhibition Gearing Up. More Cycling in the City! is all about cycling urban environments. Its focus is on the bicycle as it rose to become a widely used and accessible means of transportation. On 500 square meters of exhibition space, we show milestones of recent bicycle history: from the early mountain bike and the BMX bike to the modern e-bike and cargo bike.

Several people in an exhibition space. In the foreground, two young girls standing around a wooden wall with holes in it; in the background, a young woman and a little girl talking in front of an exhibition unit with bicycles and pictures of cyclists. — The special exhibition “Gearing Up! More Cycling in the City!” in the Ladestrasse area of the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin is all about cycling in the city.

Another focus is the conflict on streets and sidewalks today, especially in Germany. It has become difficult for cars, bicycles, and pedestrians to co-exist peacefully. How can we sensibly divide up the limited urban space? What will it take to find good solutions to these conflicts?

Gearing Up is evocatively illustrated by the Berlin pop artist Jim Avignon. Several hands-on stations make the exhibition an interactive experience for the whole family. Free interpretive programming for school classes and families and a podcast for children complement the exhibition.

Because the conflict between road users has become quite deep-seated, the exhibition explicitly invites a change of perspective. Gearing Up shows typical danger spots and illustrates the viewpoints of drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists.

Learning through Hands-On Stations

Three children stand in an exhibition room in front of a schematically simplified replica of a bicycle. One boy touches the bicycle chain depicted there. — Many experiment stations explain important bicycle functions - here, for example, the gears on a derailleur system. Visitors can discover the experiments on their own.

Visitors to Gearing Up can delve into the subject of cycling in different ways. Hands-on stations enable an experience of the mechanics of different types of bicycle gears and of your actual reaction time and braking distance when you are startled by something on the road. A VR application simulates a bike ride along a stretch of road before and after it was converted to a bicycle-friendly environment. And in many places throughout the exhibition, Jim Avignon’s expressive illustrations comment on the themes of the exhibition with special verve and humor.

The Rediscovery of Cycling

A hundred years ago, the bicycle in Germany was a mass means of transportation: in 1938, there were about 20 million bicycles and only 1.5 million cars. This changed with the economic upswing of the post-war period. People replaced their bicycles with cars, and existing bike paths were neglected or dismantled as cities and streets were developed to accommodate cars. Starting in the 1970s, bicycle traffic in West Germany increased again noticeably. The newfound enthusiasm for the bicycle signaled a connection with nature and a rejection of a “car-driven” consumer society. At the same time, the bicycle expressed a new awareness of health. From the 1980s onward, bicycles were increasingly a lifestyle choice and used for recreation. In East Germany, on the other hand, bicycles remained an important part of everyday transportation. The limited availability of cars and public transport made them a common way of getting around.

Powerful Objects: From “Trimm-Dich” to the BMX Bike

To show the many facets of cycling, we shine a light on contemporary objects, images, and film footage. Merchandising products, TV commercials, and the 1979 bicycle model “Cavallo” by Hercules are on view to illustrate the Trimm-Dich (Slim-Down) movement of the 1970s. Also on view is a mountain bike by the manufacturer Göricke, built in 1984. The mountain bike gave the bicycle an image of freedom and adventure and set new standards for bicycle construction as a whole. The BMX bike on which eleven-year-old Alexander Breest from Berlin won the first BMX championship in West Berlin in his age group in 1984 is part of Gearing Up, as is the story of Team Telekom’s successes in the late 1990s, which generated an intense hype around cycling in Germany.

The Latest Developments: E-Bikes and Cargo Bikes

View of an exhibition. Two girls are sitting on a modern cargo bike, another girl is sitting in the loading area. In the background, two boys are talking in front of a colorful large e-cargo bike. — The special exhibition is aimed at the whole family: you can even get on a modern cargo bike! Illustrations by Berlin pop artist Jim Avignon (seen in the background on a large e-cargo bike) complement the exhibition.

Starting around 2000, cycling picked up speed again thanks to e-bikes and cargo bikes. 2023 was the first year in which more electric bikes were sold in Germany than pedal bikes. Having arrived in the here and now, the exhibition shows that, when it comes to moving children around, cargo bikes are particularly popular and widespread among families today. Finally, by looking at cities outside Germany, Gearing Up also provides suggestions on how conflict may be reduced on city streets in Germany – how a more harmonious coexistence may be attained for car drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.

Special tip

Fancy cycling and exploring Berlin's industrial heritage at the same time? The Berlin Center for Industrial Heritage (bzi), a cooperation between the German Museum of Technology and the HWT Berlin, has developed eight cycle routes to explore Berlin's industrial heritage in a comfortable and environmentally friendly way by bike. Three of these cycle routes start at the Deutsches Technikmuseum.

More information here (in German)