Bike installations? Wheel 'em on

What is it with bike wheels all of a sudden? Seems they're just the coolest thing to give a twist to urban installations these days.

See, for example, the Bike Wheel Christmas Tree (right) that went up over the weekend in Bermondsey Square, already the site of the coolest bike shed in London.

Is this some sort of art movement? Seat-post-modernism? Handlebaroque?


Meanwhile at Cosmobar, a bistro just north of the Barbican so trendy people probably communicate across the table in Twitter, their window (right) has just been enlivened by an all-wheel mobile. It appears to illuminate at night; I hope so, or else the City Police vigilantes will be fining them thirty quid for not having working lights.


I'm not talking bike shops, which have done this sort of thing for ages. Pedal It!, a bike shop near the Elephant for example, has always had wheels as part of its facade furniture (right).


But it makes you wonder where all these wheels are coming from. Does this explain the increasing number of frames like this (right), stripped of anything circular, that we see on London's railings?


Even this bike (right), on the road outside Queenstown Road station in Battersea, wasn't immune.