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Yamaha Root Shows What Happens When You Let Music Instrument Designers Create a Bike

The project AH A MAY is one of the most spectacular design endeavors we stumbled upon during the last couple of years or so. The idea is as simple as it is intriguing, and it involves two of Yamaha’s divisions playing eachother’s games. That is Yamaha Corporation, who are dealing with the production of musical instruments, from pianos, keyboards and drums to sound reinforcement systems and audio FX processors and Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. who are making a living designing, manufacturing and selling motorized vehicles, such as motorcycles, ATVs, watercraft and the like.
Yamaha √ is the result of Project AH A MAY 3 photos
Photo: Yamaha
Yamaha Rootproject AH A MAY
If you pay enough attention you’ll also notice that AH A MAY is Yamaha backwards. The name of course symbolizes the role reversal in this uncanny creative project. According to corporate Yamaha sources “the theme of the exhibit will be “project AH A MAY.” In preparing for this project, the design divisions of the two Yamahas exchanged their design fields, and, without any constraints related to production or commercialization, created designs according to each Yamaha’s method and way of thinking.

These two Yamahas went about designing these products with the understanding that their products would be mirror images of one another. The goal of this project is for the designers to stimulate each other’s imaginations and seek to create products that embodied their shared image of “Yamaha
.” The results of the mixed creative process will be on display at the Joint Exhibit for the Ninth Edition of the Biennale Internationale Design Saint-Etienne 2015, March 12 to 22, 2015 in Saint-Etienne, France.

So far Yamaha has only revealed a single photo of a motorcycle designed as a part of project AH A MAY, and if you expected something else than crazy, you were wrong. The bike was baptized √, which translated from math language means “root”.

Frankly, the Yamaha √ is ahead of its time, or at least this is how we feel. Still there is a strong disturbance in the force, represented by the “was this necessary” factor. Since Yamaha’s interesting job swap project has no commercial finality, we should try to shake off prejudice and the technical approach. Surely, having a wooden plank covering the dash and preventing the rider from reading anything on the instruments is not exactly our idea of motorcycling, but Yamaha says that “taking the meters on the instrument panel off the motorcycle rider’s view, the idea of the design is to enable him or her to be a part of the passing scenery.”

With lenticular wheels and minimalist bobber looks, this MT-07-based build is definitely a creation which will compel the eye to contemplate it longer than a traditional motorcycle would. More info and photos after the exhibition opens.
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