Bicycles By Design is a quite the multidimensional bike company. Since 1981, they have been building hand made bespoke steel frames under their Swallow brand of bikes. In 2009 they expanded to add the Landescape brand with made-to-measure aluminum tandems, with made-to-measure carbon tandems added in 2012. Made-to-measure is essentially what we would refer to as semi-custom – the bike is made to custom fit the customer, but it is made out of set tubes, components, and finishes.
Now, in addition to the tandems Landescape is adding single bikes in both men’s and women’s specific models. Shown above is a sportive model with 650 wheels, though BBD says they can build almost any size frame with 700, 650, or 26″ wheels as appropriate. Landescape’s women specific bikes are built to accommodate they unique physiology of a woman, but on an individual basis. We think the bike above is reminiscent of the older US made Cannondales, in a good way, thanks to the big aluminum welds and rear dropouts.
Landescapes aluminum tandems are apparently hand made in the Czech Republic to the customer’s precise measurements, so we assume the same could be said for their aluminum single bikes. Their carbon tandems are actually made by Cyfac in France.
Check out the beautiful carbon tandem and the men’s single after the break.
The men’s single is also aluminum and made-to-measure.
This Cyfac made tandem was designed in part with the client who wanted a stiff, carbon tandem but wanted a paint job that would make the oversized carbon tubes looks less oversized. If you notice, there are two different shades of blue on the bike, one on each side since the clients couldn’t agree on which one was better! The tandem features Hope’s V-Twin disc brake converter with an internally routed rear hydraulic line. Frame weight is said to be around 3000 gm
