Harvesting Footwear
Exploring the use of plants as a single resource for future footwear design
300 million shoes are discarded in landfill every year. Made almost exclusively using petroleum-based materials, shoe manufacturing has an unprecedented harmful impact on the natural world, extruding 313 million tons of CO2 emissions every year. It is continually extractive and exploitative.
Moving away from anthropocentrism and working towards regenerative materiality, Harvesting Footwear aims to act for and in communion with nature by developing a viable biodegradable trainer, harnessing only plants as material resources.
Lignin and cellulose are the most abundant biopolymers on Earth; they are present in the structural tissue of most plants. Engineering these materials could ultimately play an important role in the transition towards bio-based materials. Harvesting footwear is then made of a composite material consisting of lignin powder, cellulose pulp, cork granules and dandelion rubber. By controlling the density of it I have explored a light material which has great rigidity in certain areas of the trainer and more flexibility in others.
Further considering the complexities of footwear manufacturing, this project aims to simplify current production by proposing a trainer in one piece made with a single process – a mould.
When recycled, the trainer replenishes the plants, the soil and nature surrounding it. By designing with methods of reciprocity we can practise conscious consumption.
Raphaël Nahmias
raphaelnahmias.com
raphaelnahmias@yahoo.fr