F O O D/ F OOT WEAR T es s a G roenewoud
Sometimes I wonder about the casualness of the design of the food which we see and eat daily. For example I wonder about all the different kinds of forms of pasta, the design of a chocolate bar and sometimes even about the ridges on the side of a cookie. I think it is very interesting that the way a cookie is designed, is very similar to the way a shoe is designed. Food is made attractive and practical by the use of different shapes, textures, fragrances and sounds. The roots of the products are not attractive enough and therefore we consciously change the edible goods that nature gives us into the products that we find in the supermarkets. For example, you sit in front of the television and you hear the cracking sound of someone biting into a Magnum. On that moment you get the desire of eating a Magnum yourself. We associate that sound with freshness and therefore we get that desire. For both footwear and food design the attractiveness and functionality are very important. Can the way on which we manipulate, design and visualize food also be used for the innovation of shoes? What is on the menu in 2025 and how will that affect footwear? To research this I’ve put together the similarities between food design and the design of footwear.
Marloes ten BĂśhmer
IMAGE Every outsole has a different pattern, what should cause a better grip. But when you see the different patterns next to each other, then you’ll probably notice that the image, which the patterns give the shoes, is more important than the grip. This is similar to the ice-creams on the left side of this page. The different ice creams only produce a different sensation in color and texture, but the functionality is the same. This is also applied on the design of chocolate drops.
FUNCTIONALITY StĂŠphane Bureaux (food designer) adapts the original product (the carrot) in such a way that it becomes a tool to ladle the sauce on the carrot. Rick Owens designed a shoe for Adidas which used the Springblade soles to improve running performance. I saw many similarities between these two examples, because in both situations they have adjusted some parts of the products to improve the functionality and therefore they established to make the products even more attractive.
FORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION This is another example of a design of food (pasta) in which the product is adapted in such a way that it absorbs the sauce. In this example I see many similarities with the design of Sutsuki Ohata. He used the shape of the anatomy of the foot, whereby the rubber substance surrounded the foot as a kind of second skin.
‘pasta by design’ Georg L Legendre
CONSISTENCE During a workshop in Toscanie I have become fascinated with the world of the tanning process and the research lab. It made an impression to learn about how they can simulate situations in the leather that effect the shape and aesthetics of the skin. For example the change of color through use of light or the stretch of the material. I experienced that we are constantly researching the resistance of materials for both food and footwear.
SHAPE On the left image you see a sketch of a Magnum. The original shape, which we know from a Magnum, gives you the impression of a big block of ice, although the manufacturer finds it very important that the product looks gracious. Therefore they rounded the corners. Shape, volume and proportions are concepts which can be applied to both food and footwear design.
Magnum sketch
Rick Owens
PRODUCTION
COMFORT Food should be practical. Take a bar of chocolate for example, they designed this in a way that it’s easy to share. Shoes should be practical to. For example, in a research of Marloes ten Bohmer , she questions and exposes the role high heels play in the cultural construction of female identity.
GROW
Ross Barber
MODULAR SYSTEM
United Nude
SALE
Solebox, Berlin
SUSTAINABILITY The bottles on the left image can be eaten after you’ve consumed what’s inside of them. This is a good example of a sustainable food product. Durability is also becoming very important for shoe design: What are you going to do with your shoe after it is worn out? OAT shoes responded on this question by designing a shoe that you can be put in the ground after they have been worn out. And after you’ve put the shoe into the ground, the shoe will bloom into a three. And therefore the phrase: The shoes that bloom.
CONSTRUCTION The bigger the consistency in a food product is, the more attractive we experience the taste. The combination of different tastes in different layers in food products is the secret of many candy products. Therefore the composition of these product is very important. And this is also compliable for shoes. For example the different layers in an outsole determine if a shoe is comfortable or not. Nike shows this literally by adding a bubble into the outsole: Nike Air. This gives the impression of a springing and comfortable outsole.
PSYGOLOGY OF COLOR
MOLECULAR MOULDING
NIKE Sole
PACKAGE
BIO FABRICATION
Students on the University of Wageningen are investigating food technology. One of the main things they are trying to do is to simulate the structure of meat, by using proteins and enzymes. They have managed to create a substitution for meat which is similar to the structure of chicken. The traditional meat production process costs a lot of money, resources and water to be able to feed the animals and it takes a long time before the animals are big enough to be consumed. Therefore they already try to breed meat in the food industry: Bio fabrication. Food products made by bio fabrication are generated out of stem cells of animals. They are also investigating to apply this technique to create leather material. Andras Forafers (co-owner Modern Meadow) explains in ‘TED talks’ that the bio fabrication of leather is even easier than the breeding of meat. He says that the characteristics of real leather can almost be simulated and that this leather has many benefits, like that it contains no animal sacrifice and there is no waste. And because they grow this material from the ground up, they can control its properties and therefore they can even make it transparent. They can adjust the softness, breathability, durability, elasticity and even things like pattern.
As a conclusion I think that it will become more and more necessary that we have to look for many substitutions for leather in the footwear industry, as much as we have searched for substitutions for meat in de food industry. Designers of shoes are already using new kinds of replacing materials for leather (see the page on the right) and I think that by the year of 2025 the use of replacing materials, such as leather made with bio fabrication, will be the norm. It will become necessary for shoe designers to become also a bit of a laboratory worker. For example Liz Ciokajlo is using natural materials combined with new technologies. By concentrating the fibres and adding binders, the properties and characteristics could change, producing both soft and hard material over one continuous surface. I believe that if we are able to synthetically manipulate fragrances in food products, then we should also be able to manipulate new leather structures for the footwear industry. Like injection breed leather. After a while this will multiply in the mold. The way of the manufacturing of the mold will affect the patterns in the leather. The advantage of this way of manufacturing leather is that the material can immediately take the shape of the shoe and it does not have to be made out of flat slices of leather. This prevents the waste of the material. I think that the genetic characteristics in different stem cells will make it possible for a customer to choose which characteristics the leather of the end product should get. With this, the customer will be able to be a part of the creation of their own shoes and therefore I think that “Growing Shoes� will be on the menu of 2025.
Mold to grow the shoe
Bio fabrication makes it possible to create complex systems
documentary: Close up; Food Design Tegenlicht VPRO; De toekomst van ons voedsel: landbouw of laboratorium TED talks; Andras Forafers (co-owner Modern Meadow)
Tessa Groenewoud info@tessagroenewoud.com www.tessagroenewoud.com