A few years ago I got to do a workshop with some designers from New Balance. It was very cool to learn how they approach the design of footwear. The idea behind the workshop was to reimagine some aspect of footwear. The design I went with was a sports shoe designed to be as light and still provide good support. The upper would be knit for fit and breathability. Surrounding the uppoer is an organically inspired plastic mesh to provide stiffness and support. I used Houdini and took a procedural approach to the designs.

My final concept was a knit upper with a plastic support structure grown on it. The designers from New Balance provided some stress data for a shoe upper that they had gathered from an athlete performing a series of lateral stops and sprints in a gym. I used this stress data to influence the growth of the plastic support, making it denser in areas that see greater stress during lateral motion, thereby providing more support. This design would be well suited for basketball or other gym sports that require quick direction changes and high degrees of stability.

New Balance provided us with two data sets. One of them contained the strain values in a shoe upper corresponding to fast direction changes while running. The other was the strain developed in the sole of a shoe during running. I visualized the two datasets together in the following picture.

They were kind enought to print the shoe for me:

Along the way, I also made a few concepts for spike plates grown to provide more structure and support in areas that see high force:

And lots of screengrabs from Houdini because there’s something beautiful about the way it previews geometry.