Bryce Gracey of No.22 Bicycle Company talks titanium, 3D printing and pushing boundaries in bike design
Words Paddy Maddison Photography Patrik Lundin
You only have to glance at a No.22 bike to know that it’s the work of someone with a deep-seated understanding of aesthetics and proportion. Perfectly balanced, beautifully finished and with some of the cleanest lines in the business, No.22’s bicycles are influenced heavily by co-founder Bryce Gracey’s background in architecture.
‘It’s a very similar process,’ Gracey explains from the company’s facility in Upstate New York, USA. ‘You come up with an idea, then it’s a case of working out how to execute it. Typically in architecture every project is unique so there’s always a need to explore new technologies and systems to make a concept work. I think you can see this in some of the things we’re doing at No.22 that haven’t been done before.
‘It’s like: this is what we want to do, now let’s figure out how to get there. And really knowing how to collaborate with our team and different manufacturers to bring these ideas into reality is a big part of how we work.’
Gracey has been a bike fanatic since the late 1990s, around the same time he went to design school and did his masters in architecture. And while the bike took a back seat during his studies, his endeavours in cycling and design have been intertwined ever since.
This was what eventually led to the No.22 Bicycle Company, created by Gracey and co-founder Mike Smith in 2011 with a view to making the most of their favoured framebuilding material: titanium, atomic number 22 you see.
‘We’re always pushing the material forward,’ says Gracey. ‘I think when we started we were coming at it with an approach of combining artisan precision and contemporary performance, so we’d stand toe to toe with what was going on in carbon bikes. We wanted to do away with the stereotype that metal bikes were antiquated in comparison.
‘I mean, we had flat-mount disc brakes on our forks before Enve had even released its flat-mount forks, and we’re always exploring different technologies. This is what led to us working heavily with 3D printing. It has allowed us to develop our own internal cockpit system, our own dropouts – pretty much everything on our bikes now is bespoke t
