Master Product Design students from ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne have created, in collaboration with Swiss brand On Running, shoe soles of the future.
Under the guidance of Christophe Guberan, guest designer of MA Product Design and support of Thilo Alex Brunner, head of design at On, students explored within the context of the year 2040, concept shoe soles.
The outcomes range from exploring the use of new materials and processes, to reinterpreting and re-contextualising common place aspects of todays world, all with a focus on future performance.
A select number of the designs were developed into elaborate prototypes and exhibited at On’s new headquarters in Zurich in collaboration with works from other ECAL MA’s photography and Type Design.
Studio project (2022) by Tsubasa Koshide, Stefan Troendle, Clemens Neureiter, Paul Rees, Lukas Lüttgen, Antoine Jacquat, Manuel Steffan
By Paul Rees: HOW TO CREATE THE SENSATION OF EFFORTLESS FLOATING DURING THE RUN?
Inspired by the feeling of jumping on a trampoline, this shoe sole is composed of two elements: a customisable elastic web and a hollow EVA sole. This new construction offers a new running dynamic.
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By Clemens Neureiter : REIMAGINING THE CARBON-PLATE FOR RUNNING SHOES
Pushing the expression of a shoe sole to its limits, this carbon fibre rod sole plays with the elasticity and the resistance of this highly technical material to create a good cushioning and to minimise both material usage and weight.
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By Tsubasa Koshide: HOW TO CREATE A SHOE SOLE WITH A CUSTOMISABLE BALANCE?
Thanks to new multi-material 3D printing techniques, this shoe sole concept offers the possibility to customise material densities across the entire component. Each Shoe can therefore be precisely adapted to each runner.
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By Stefan Troendle: HOW TO MAKE A WOVEN SHOE SOLE ?
Playing with new possibilities of 3D weaving, this shoe sole concept could be produced in one part allowing for both customisable cushioning and efficient production.
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By Antoine Jacquat: HOW TO PRODUCE SOLES WITHOUT MOULDS?
3D printing technologies are offering various new possibilities to the footwear industry; however, processes are often limited by slow production cycles. Instead, this concept uses a heat inflating 3D printed foam to allow for post-printing expansion, making production more efficient and feasible whilst benefiting from the free design constraint possibilities of 3D printing.
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By Lukas Lüttgen: HOW TO CREATE AN ADAPTIVE SOLE?
Composed of recycled TPU, this concept shoe sole is designed to bio-mimic the fin-ray effect whilst being produced by traditional extrusion process.
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By Manuel Steffan: WHAT COULD BE THE LIGHTEST, YET HIGH PERFORMING RUNNING SOLE?
This shoe sole concept utilises a 3D printed thread structure to both reduce the quantity of material required and allow for customisable sizing and compression density.
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MA PRODUCT DESIGN
by Adam Friedrich
Airy is a research project that explores the use of air as a primary resource. It uses inflatable structures to protect valuable devices during travel. The design employs contemporary materials and pays particular attention to detail to offer relevant, everyday solutions for safeguarding increasingly fragile and valuable electronic devices.
MA PRODUCT DESIGN
by Alicia Stricker
Folly approaches the craft of beaded embroidery from a product design perspective. It explores the value of tactility above the visual aspects that the technique is traditionally valued for. Consequently, the project manifested as something that is experienced by the body - a sofa. Scaling up the traditionally small beads and applying principles of beaded embroidery in the development of a textile sofa cover allowed for the sofa to transcend its classic typology, creating a three-dimensional surface with a biological sculptural presence - an object that breaks the mould of what we expect of something as familiar as a sofa and begs to be experienced through touch.
MA PRODUCT DESIGN
by Brice Tempier
Due to limited housing capacity in urban areas, more people are living in small dwellings. At the same time, renting has become a common form of housing in many countries, including among adults. These conditions, sometimes marked by instability, frequent moves, and a feeling of not truly belonging to the place where one lives, led the designer to reflect on our relationship with domestic space, its temporary nature, and the difficulty of making it one’s own. This project takes the form of a small, mobile structure, the size of a bed, conceived as a personal spatial frame within a room. Péninsule is a dense and flexible living space, a micro-architecture open to appropriation.
MA PRODUCT DESIGN
by Carl Johan Jacobsen
In the U.K new court ruling threatens trans-people while the US government is doing a full assault on trans and female bodies. Hardwear is a collection of wearable objects offering a sense of protection in urban environments, as a response to a growing tendency of hostility towards the body. Hard surfaces become flexible armor, protective shields transform into high heels. Whether to preserve personal space on public transport or to create cognitive distance Hardwear aims to create a sense of security. By using hard materials, the feeling of being safe inside a car is transformed to the outside resulting in a line of wearable objects made for for everyday resistance. Drawn on protection typologies from sportswear, Hardwear is made of 100% recycled plastic with 3D printed elements.
MA PRODUCT DESIGN
by Cedric Zimmerman
DUCTUS is investigating how tangential fans can be reinterpreted in combination with spiral ducts, which are normally used in industrial HVAC systems, in a modular, energy-efficient ceiling ventilation system. The galvanised sheet metal is perforated locally using a specially developed laser manufacturing process and then processed into spiral ducts in an industrial standard procedure with almost no material loss. These ducts serve both as air ducts and as a supporting structure for the fan unit. The system, manufactured in collaboration with the Lausanne-based company Air Ventil, generates a wide, quiet air flow while also adding architectural accents.