What if you could ride to work on a bike and disassemble it at the destination to reassemble it as an armchair to sit on in the meeting room" It is not easy for industrial designers to create a product disguised as a completely different idea. This is how the Outlaw Bike was born in Brazil though. We can argue, and you will read further why, that the bike is designed as an awareness campaign against the Brazilian tax regime, but it is in fact a project that will have many minds latching onto the idea for industrial gains.

The bicycle design, created by Cardoso Cycles for a collaborative awareness drive by Talent Marcel and Bicycling Magazine, can be disassembled instantly to be assembled into an armchair and a table. The idea is to draw the Brazilian tax authority’s attention to the tax burden that affects sales of bicycles in the country.
The popularity of bikes is steadily scaling in Brazil but taxes as high as 70 percent on bicycles makes bikes very expensive and render them inaccessible to most of the population. The Outlaw Bike however pretends to be furniture (which is taxable at 12 percent) so it is less expensive.

The project allows consumers to choose the form factor of their product: furniture or bicycle; depending on the tax option they choose. That said, either way, the furniture or bike are made from the same parts and same material. It’s only that they are assembled differently. The materials involved inc...