This lovely couple is custom-built for the “Villa Cavrois”, located just outside of Roubaix, for their employees and associates. The Villa Cavrois is now a museum and used to be the residence of a textile industry dynasty, the Cavrois family, who had it built in the 1920s strongly influenced by modernist design and architecture concepts, inspired by movements of the time such as the Bauhaus.
My workshop is in on of the factories of the Cavrois family, a “filature” built in the second half of the 19th century in Roubaix. When the team of the Villa Cavrois wanted to provide a couple of bikes to their employees and guides as a mode of transportation to meetings or just between different sites it was a logical step to reach out if I could build those two bikes in the former factory. For me it was a welcome opportunity to bring to life an earlier idea of a multipurpose frame set, that adapts to a wider range of sizes and can be built up in many ways.
The design
The idea of such a multipurpose frame set is not new. In fact, the first frame I ever built was already a concept heading into this direction. The Villa Cavrois bikes allowed me to finetune the concept and further develop some of the ideas. I wanted to create a frameset that is a) quick to build - for example all of the mitering angles of the front triangle except for the down tube head tube are 90 degrees, optimizing machine set up - and b) allows for a maximum of build-up options - the frame set could easily be built up as a gravel or bikepacking rig, a touring bike or as in this case a city bike. All cables are external with bolt-on cable guides and the adjustable sliding dropouts from Paragon Machines Works give a ton of options for all kinds of transmission setups. In order to allow different wheel sizes from 26” with 60 mm tires to 650b with 38 to 55 mm all the way to 700c with 38 mm tire width the choice fell on disc brakes. I also chose to use a 1” head tube for quill stems to allow a bigger range of adjustments to different rider sizes.
To show the versatility one of the bikes for the Villa Cavrois is built up with an robust internal gear hub while the other has a light derailleur based transmission
Putting things in perspective
I didn’t want to overlook the social aspect and the history of inequality and exploitation connected to the Villa Cavrois. The great contrast of the abundant villa, a huge mansion surrounded by an enormous park, versus the nearby endless rows of narrow red brick houses for workers built in the 1930s and parades of factory chimneys in Roubaix are a testimony that we’re not all equal with the same access to opportunities.
At birth, we’re all cut from the same cloth. Just like the frames for these two bikes, all made from identical tube sets with exactly the same measurements and geometry. But what happens after birth for us is mostly impacted by circumstances and many times just pure luck. You can be born into war or peace, abundance or scarcity, into a rich factory owner family or the family of a machinist in a textile factory.
The different assemblies of the two bikes are to highlight this contrast. One bike, in the green of the main hall of the villa with a frame that has filed and smoothened filets, is equipped with a light chain based transmission and polished components. The other one in the red and black of the factories, with raw filets, is equipped with a heavier but robust internal geared hub and chunkier tires built for the heavier duties.
Detailed photos for each bike can be found as usual in the “Bikes” section:
I’m thankful for the opportunity to work on this project, linking Roubaix’s long industrial history in textile with the more recent but equally important cycling culture.
