One may argue that the first true designer was a cobbler. After all, a shoe carries most of the burden of movement. It is meant to protect, accommodate the nuanced movements of the human muscles, as well as adapt to various types of terrains. This is why, with the purpose of examining the interactions between the human body and a designed space, we were tasked to analyse the unique qualities and dualities of a performance shoe. This would then be translated to the design of an abstracted conceptual model. 

 

In this project, I have chosen a pair of hiking shoes that are at once lightweight, flexible and robust. It is a shoe made up of many separate components, held together by tensile forces; whether it be the tension of a thread, or a shoelace. With no exact form of its own, it takes on the shape of the user's foot, wrapping around and compressing against every curve and bend of its anatomy. 

 

My physical model was an attempt to showcase these dualities. Using the actual shoe as a host, I demonstrated a kind of parasitic intervention, representing both the compression and tensile forces that make or break the integrity of the shoe.