DESIGN FOR THE COMMON MAN

They studied together at NTNU and toyed with the idea of starting their own business. Two years later, the product design company called Kadabra has been founded at the Leiv Eriksson Business Incubation Centre in Trondheim. The goal of the four industrial designers who formed the business is to offer innovative designs on a consultancy basis. Kadabra’s services are already in demand. The company has developed a bicycle rack it calls “Løv” (literally, “Leaves”) for Ørsta Stål, which will install the rack in a number of Norwegian cities in 2006. Aesthetic qualities are normally not the top priority for bicycle rack designs – usually the design is simply a matter of bending some steel tubes. “We were inspired by nature and we let the bicycle stand ‘grow’ out of the cobblestones. The stand also has protective, rubberised sides to prevent it from scratching bicycles”, Espen Jørgensen (left) explains. The three other designers at Kadabra are Carl André Nørstebø (right), Carl-Gustaf Lundholm and Jørgen Solstad.