**Midjourney A.I created image, used for privacy
“My thesis question is related to the material but also the conformability of the 3 dimensional form, so the way that shoes are made, pretty much 99% of shoes is taking a 2 dimensional material like a fabric, then converting those 2 dimensions into 3 dimension, and the problem with that is that there’s a huge issue with waste- which is probably something that you’ve looked into. So basically, when I was working for New Balance, they proposed this challenge to us, which was that for every pair of shoes that was made, one shoe was waste material. So that was the kind of premise for our investigation, and alongside some material research.”
“Is that because you’re trying to make so many different tests?”
“No, the problem with it, is because you’re trying to create a 3 dimensional form from a 2 dimensional set of materials, so you can imagine a sheet of material to kind of produce the net plan of the 3 dimensional form, there’s a lot of waste material. So the idea that we then proposed was that then how do we grow the shoe? How do we take the beginnings of the challenge of the form, alongside the material research to basically create a one to one of material usage? So we were using a very advanced technique called electrospinning, which is something that you at this point wouldn’t have access to the tooling because it’s quite advanced, let's say. But in terms of the question, those are my two avenues of research. So one, is the form- how do we become more efficient in producing complex shapes? And then, the second branch of research is the actual material research which is something that you are exploring now, and some of the questions about that. So for example, have you heard of the idea that came from a guy called Neil Gurdjenfeld, which is the centre for Bits and Atoms at MIT? So MIT is the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, there’s an amazing guy who runs the self assembly lab, called Sklyar Tibbits- I could send you some links to these things. So he’s looking for ways in which we can use self assembly within the principles of nature to grow materials. So there’s a whole branch of research that was called ‘How to make almost anything’, which came out of this lab of research, and then it became something called ‘how to grow almost anything’, so off the back of that, some of your questions were asking if I knew any companies or people working in this field; there’s a really nice woman called Liz Corby who I co-lecture with and she runs a company called Materiom. There’s a database for recipes and things, they’re quite good because it’s generally hands on, there's kind of a limit about what you can do within your own kitchen. Then the second point is to actually start to collaborate with scientific laboratories. I would try over the next 2 or 3 months to look at some industry collaborations and then also some scientific research groups just as a reference point, because you’ll be limited a bit in terms of taking this into a masters level or a professional level, because you end up needing to have to work with material scientists. So to develop the materials to a point where they’re doing life-cycle testing and being able to produce complex forms with materials that don't degrade in water and things like that, so there’s different stages of your research. So now at the beginning stage, there are companies like Materiom,your own research, maybe looking at Chitosan, in terms of how to create this kind of more rigid structures. So to build up a profile over the shoe, what are the parameters that you need to understand? Then look at designs of shoes in contemporary society now, so you have companies such as barefoot [Vivobarefoot] and things that are very much connecting the physiology of your body to the ground. And then you have very advanced shoes like 3d printed prototype shoes, like Adidas and Nike are doing things like that. Look at what’s being done in the market, and also look at concept shoes. The trend is generally to explore new materials, so you’re definitely in the right area of research. In terms of the shrinkage rate, it’s a challenge right, because generally biomaterials are aqueous because they’re water based, which means that you’re producing a water based solution, that has a certain density, and then when the water evaporates, the density of that material increases through evaporation, and then the material becomes solid but then it shrinks. There are technical solutions to that; there’s a technique called lyophilization. So, it’s freeze drying- you might try and find universities i.e Plymouth University, they might have a chemistry department- freeze drying is very common, because we do it with food very often. So, the posh term is called lyophilization, and what it does is it stables the material in a form. So you can create a mold, lets say, you have a petri dish, you pour your solution into a petri dish, and through freeze drying, the freezing stabilises that material, then the water is removed from that material, and you’re left with that material in the form that you’ve created. So, the water is- you can just research lyophilization, and freeze drying, and that helps to create the form. You basically take the liquid- the solution that you’ve made, which is a water based solution, you then freeze it and then you put it in a very low vacuum, and then the water is slowly pulled from the material under a very low vacuum while still being frozen. It sounds complicated but pretty much any department in chemistry would have this machine. So I’ll be one minute I’ll just find you something…….. It’s not a very good sample! This is silk. This is freeze dried.
“As a cylinder?”
“Yeah, so it’s just in a tube, formed in a tube. So that’s one way to do that. You can get some quite good, 100% eco- epoxies as well, but they’re very brittle, so when things are brittle it's called very high crystalline structures, so to create something which is completely transparent is very challenging. Because, the refractive index of water is very high, so it produces a very transparent effect. But do you know when I mentioned about the evaporation rate of water, and when densities increase the diffraction rating decreases, so you start to get a hazy material. So, it’s quite challenging to produce very transparent biomaterials.
“I’d thought that might be the answer, but I thought, you never know!”
“Yeah, I think at this stage maybe look more towards the methodology of your research, alongside your material experiment. At this stage, I wouldn’t worry too much about the aesthetics. You know, you can have a vision about what this might look like in the future, and you can start to experiment towards that vision, but maybe try and tackle some of the bigger answers of, you know, how do we reduce waste challenges? Because, that’s the challenge actually, is to produce a shoe from the ergonomics of the skeleton rather than manufacturing of the material. A lot of the research that you're trying at the moment you can get the raw material from a lot of different high quality organic based online shops- if you start to really experiment and to make fine tune adjustments to your recipe, there’s a company called Signor Aldrich? They’ve been renamed, they’ve just been bought, they’re now called Merck. They supply all the scientific grade materials. so if you needed to get calcium, at 99.9% recurring, then they sell that. There’s another company called Fisher Scientific. So they’re very high-grade scientific materials, basically.
“I was wondering about that, because I was using Ebay and Amazon to buy my ingredients.”
“Well, I think that’s okay at this stage. Just try and find a generic high-grade supplier. Once you find very high-grade, pure scientific materials, they become very expensive. I can drop you an email with links to different companies etc, hopefully that’s helpful. Identify the main challenge, which is in the current production of shoes, is waste management. Because, even if you’re using biomaterials, there’s actually, a lot of energy that goes into producing any material. So even if your output is biodegradable, environmentally sustainable, there’s still considerable energy that goes into that process, so in terms of identifying waste stream systems, maybe look at it from energy systems management, so you answer the question from the energy standpoint. Like, what’s the most energy efficient way of producing a shoe? Then you can start to explore what that means to you. So it’s an energy systems question. Then obviously continue doing your research into materials and experiments, the practical side of things. If you can start to create molds or forms towards what the shoe might look like that’s brilliant. But also, you could still present high quality material samples. If you’re struggling to actually try to create the form of the shoe, that’s functioning, you can then produce the materials and then speculate towards the design of the shoe, and how that might happen. Maybe in the future you can then collaborate with a company or institution that you’ve identified as interesting, to then try and create the actual product. But maybe if you’re struggling- I know how much time it takes to create the form of a shoe that’s functioning, you could maybe just speculate the design of the shoe, and how that might happen. So I’ll send you a link to Skylar Tibit’s work, where he was creating a 4 dimensional shoe. He’d basically print in 2 dimensions and the shoe would then change in relation to the environment and then produce a 3 dimensional form, and it was a very speculative shape of what a shoe would look like. So it wasn’t a functioning shoe at all, but it just created the form of a shoe. So maybe that’s something that you could try and work towards, is actually creating a very basic understanding of what the form of a shoe might look like. The images that you’ve sent me are very complicated because they’re based on nature driven processes in evolution and A.I systems. But maybe you could, within your degree and final presentation, show the images that you created, but then understand the limitations of the material, and work with the material as the speculation of form, that doesn’t necessarily represent the complex A.I form, but it speculates a little bit towards the form of the shoe. So, because it’s quite overwhelming I think to look at the images you’ve got, which are very beautiful and complicated, to then feel like then you can create that using biomaterial, it’s not realistic in the time frame that you’ve got.
“So it could be worth taking an aspect of the shoe like the lace or the heel and working on that for a while?”
“Yeah, good idea. So this comes down now to your time management and what you want to show. When we were approached to create a shoe, there are many aspects of what a shoe is, so you have different types of shoe for different applications. A trainer is very different to a stiletto, so we actually focused on a few parts of the shoe, we focused on the sole of the shoe, the inner sole, that goes inside the shoe- the thing you have most contact with. We produced the sole made from silk- cause this material is like a sponge, it’s very soft. Then we were working with a shoe designer called Yojan Solomon, he wanted to create the heel of the shoe. So then we created a very hard biomaterial for the heel of the stiletto. We were just focusing on a few aspects. So break the steps down in a way that has a methodology to it- that methodology could start from the deconstruction of shoes that are already in the market. You could take one of the shoes you have, deconstruct it so you understand how that shoe is made, and then from that you can then identify the design challenges that you want to then find, so then you might focus on what is the most important aspect of a shoe- maybe it's the inner arch. There’s a lot of medical challenges around dropped arches. So maybe then focus on the inner arch as your beginning point. And you then focus on the heel, then focus on the whole trainer. So you can build it in stages. This is how design works; quite often you’ll have a feedback loop of people saying, “it hurts when I run- how can we design a trainer to make it not hurt? Then you start to focus on the ergonomics of the trainer. Then you start to understand which part of the foot needs to be supported in different ways. Then you have a design focus and a direction, rather than just trying to create an abstract solution to something that’s quite overwhelming. So look at the challenges you’ve found in your research, for example, waste management, energy systems management, and then the second one is a design solution you could focus on. The third iteration of that is a speculation which is very futuristic in terms of what the vision of your idea might become. And for example, it could be like an alginate material that you then lazer cut and then produce one twist. You could put ¾ cuts in it, then it might fold, then you have some understanding or recognition where you could show someone who could see that it kind of looks like a shoe, but really it’s just one piece of material folded in a clever way.
“Or I could laser cut a pattern and try to sew it?”
“Yeah exactly. It is possible to laser cut but it depends on the way you’ve made the material. But you could do something like laser cut cardboard, then layer that onto your biomaterial by hand, so you’re not focusing on resolved manufacturing processes, you’re just doing one off prototype speculation towards what the form of a shoe might look like to somebody. So I hope that gives you more structure.”
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