I was quite stunned when I first saw this...at first glance I thought it was a swooping chair until I read the title of the piece...a shoe?
It was quite striking and bizarre to think that such an open design could be a shoe of all things and was then even more taken aback to see that Julian Hakes is actually an architect! The design consists of a single piece that wraps around the wearer's foot, forming support for the heel and ball. The foot naturally forms a bridge between the two.
The product is made of carbon fibre, laminated with rubber on the side that touches the floor and leather on the side that touches the skin.
Words from Julian:
When I look at a foot print on sand it is very clear to see that the main force goes to the heel and ball.
With a high heel providing the heel is supported, even by standing on a wooden block the foot naturally ’spans’ the gap naturally, with bones and tendons. The foot has its own inbuilt strength and support so why duplicate this.
So this raised the question, if the design of a shoe was an evolution of the early sandal and how can new materials and design techniques provide new solution?
So I set to exploring this question in a similar way to how I would design a bridge, examining the forces and looking at the most simple, elegant yet poetic expression of the forces at play within the materials used.
With this approach I then set about wrapping my foot in tracing paper, then binding it up in masking tape and then drawings various geometries onto and over the form of my foot.
With this approach I then set about wrapping my foot in tracing paper, then binding it up in masking tape and then drawings various geometries onto and over the form of my foot.
The next stage was rather dangerous as I had to cut the shape off my foot with a scalpel and not damage the pattern or my foot.
The design this produced is a single wrapped geometry which starts under the ball of the foot and then over the bridge, then sweeping down below the heel before then twisting back on itself to provide the support for the heel and ankle.
We are now in talks with specalist shoe fabricators in for the inital prototypes, a firm in Italy would be able to make the inner carbon fibre core and then I would love to get some fabulous furniture makers in High Wycombe to ’skin’ the shoe in leather as their stitching detailing is second to none.
