By day, Noah Wangerin teaches design at the University of Illinois, Chicago. At nights and on weekends, he plies his passion as a builder of custom bikes that include his eponymous trade name, but which reflect the needs and desires of his clients.
Rather than offering specific models of Wan Gerin bikes, Noah identifies each purpose-built bike for his clients as its owner’s possession. As such, “Sarah’s bike” will look much different from “John’s bike”, and so on.
The ideal amalgam of form and function has always been a touchstone in the frame building world. The bike may have a fabulous paint job and impeccable lug work, but will it ride well? Noah insists that his bikes are, at their core, “utilitarian” and a triumph of “function over form,” an axiom promoted by the globally influential Chicago architect Louis Sullivan.
Builders of custom bicycle frames have tended toward the solution offered by Sullivan’s employee Frank Lloyd Wright, that form and function are one, and our news team thought they spotted a hint of a FLW tribute in the elegantly cut lugs.
Further evidence of Noah’s practical approach is the conversion of an old Fuji frame that he refinished, made a custom fork/rack combo, added a Bafang motor and rebirthed it as a cargo bike. Not exactly cradle to cradle, but a heck of a lot less resource-intensive than starting from scratch.
Wangerin started building frames, as many Midwesterners do, at famed Michigan framebuilder Doug Fattic’s workshop back in 2013. “All I wanted to do was to build myself a bike to ride,” he says. Having duly accomplished that, he went on to apprentice with fellow UI-Chicago design professor and cycling enthusiast Dan Schaumann of Pachyderm Cycles, sharing workshop space in the Chicago Bubbly Dynamics co-op.
When a customer approaches Noah Wangerin about a bespoke design bicycle, that’s what she will at the end receive. As such, there are no prevailing design or component spec trends, with the possible exception of steel tubing, which is Noah’s medium of choice. Some bikes will have lugged construction, others fillet brazing, and the permutations unfold regarding wheel sizes, flat or drop bars, rim or disc brakes, paint colors, and on.
You can see many of Noah Wangerin’s perfectly tailored bespoke and stunning designs at www.noahwangerin.com.
Photos: Brad Quartuccio, Dave LaMay, Nora Flood
