MOMA, Buy me a CLOSCA
Loop is the name of Closca’s latest innovation in cyclists’ helmets. The new model is lighter, more aerodynamic, and perhaps more important, it comes in colours, 15 to be exact.
As well as selling in the Guggenheim Museum, the Valencian company Closca now sells its cyclists’ helmets in New York’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) shop.
Personally I have ambiguous feelings about cyclists; having walked the Camino de Santiago you come to hate the tinkle of their bells as they cycle up behind you insisting that you break your rhythm every ten seconds to let them through, when there is a perfectly good road just yards away. In fact I almost dislike them as much as I dislike people who run the Camino, while I’m struggling up a hill imagining that this is as hard as it gets, and they just flash by cheerfully as if the whole thing was just too damned easy.
But I suppose cyclism is the means of transport of the future, especially when all the oil dries up and the ice caps melt and turn our habitat into one big wetland.
So, on balance I would say that it’s a good thing that a group of three Valencian entrepreneurs, graduates of Valencia Polytechnic Faculty of Industrial Engineering, who claim to be insatiable travellers that live respectfully with our environment, have come up with the idea of CLOSCA.
CLOSCA design helmets for cyclists, and not only do they conform to the highest safety standards in the world, the European EN 1087 and American U.S. CPSC, but they also resolve that frustrating problem for today’s cycling executive who doesn’t want his high-flying colleagues to know that he cycles to work: where do I hide my helmet?
The CLOSCA helmet folds up to half its size,becoming flat like a book that can be kept in any bag or backpack.
They even offer fashion options, which is not a bad thing for a community like cyclists, who with their tight clothing and emphatic bottoms and thighs have never really drawn much attention from those of us who enjoy good taste in clothing. The CLOSCA helmet incorporates 6 interchangeable covers and you can even make your own cover; just create your own pattern and the design team will send back the helmet as you designed it.
Being flexible and foldable doesn’t mean that the CLOSCA helmet is less safe; it is in fact a multi-impact helmet, with a structure made of expanded high density polypropylene (EPP), with extraordinary properties of impact absorption as well as elasticity. EPP absorbs the energy of the blow, which is retained in its molecular structure, dissipating plastic deformation, thereby preventing it from reaching the wearer’s head. If this energy does not reach the elastic limit of the EPP, the helmet recovers its shape and it is not necessary to change the helmet with a new one, as is the usual case. Furthermore, the innovative application of this material (EPP) makes CLOSCA helmet one of the lightest on the market.
And there is hope for those of us with strangely shaped heads; as a result of rigorous anthropometric studies conducted in collaboration with the Institute of Biomechanics of Valencia (IBV), CLOSCA helmets feature a full range of sizes (XS, S, M and L) designed to suit all human users.
According to The Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute, in an accident, cyclists who do not use a properly fastened, approved helmet are nearly twice as likely to suffer a serious head injury. More than 540,000 cyclists require emergency services for accidents each year and over 12 % with brain injuries. Over 85 % of brain damage produced in falls with bicycles could have been prevented using a helmet.
And of course, unlike your head, the CLOSCA helmet in 100% recycleable.
Climate-KIC, which promotes environmental development and innovation, has chosen CLOSCA to be one of the 14 European projects for its first accelerator programme.
CLOSCA is a truly Valencia International company, selling 35% of its product in the USA and Canada; more than they sell in Spain in fact.
See another article about the faculty of Engineering here:
http://valencia-international.com/a-valencian-engineer-at-the-heart-of-project-management-in-spain/
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