Botwin (who is played by Justin Kirk) brings the wheel back to New York City with plans to launch the wheel in the U.S. at his new bike shop--which fronts a weed dispensary, of course.
As any reader of Co.Design knows, the Copenhagen Wheel is a real product developed by MIT's SENSEable Lab that won the prestigious James Dyson Award in the U.S. last year. So how did one of 2010's biggest design stories end up on a show about a pot-hustling mom?
Christine Outram, the Copenhagen Wheel's product manager and MIT graduate who we interviewed last year, says she was contacted in March by the show's executive producer, who wanted to feature the wheel as part of the story--with her blessing, of course. "They were definitely interested in representing it fairly," she tells Co.Design. "They sent us copies of the script and were very open about how it would be used." Soon Outram found herself visiting a faux-Copenhagen at the set in Studio City, where she answered questions from the writers and even assembled a prototype onto a bike to show them how it worked.
Executive producer Mark Burley tells Co.Design that the idea originated from the show's writing team, who thought it was a perfect fit for the Copenhagen setting and Andy's ecologically minded character.
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