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Nike Merges Craft and Digital Manufacturing to Explore the Nature of Motion
In Milan, Nike staged a large-scale installation celebrating the spirit of material innovation and the Nature of Motion through collaborations with an international cadre of talented designers and a joyful display of the imaginings of their in-house design team. With a focus on the evolution of the Nike running shoe—from their technical and material innovations behind the Flyknit to the origami-inspired soles debuting on the new Nike Free—Nature was an experiential exhibition in two parts.
Within multiple vignettes constructed with 20,000 white Nike boxes, the company commissioned seven projects inspired by the theme, “The Nature of Motion.” Lindsey Adelman, Zaven, Martino Gamper, Greg Lynn, Bertjan Pot and Clara von Zweigbergk & Shane Schneck each interpreted the theme creating design objects that played with ideas of balance, human resilience and sound.
The more exciting moments came in the second half of the presentation when visitors were given a peek into the ways that Nike encourages innovations from their design team with a display of blue-sky experiments from Nike’s in-house designers. They were called upon to showcase how material inspiration can come from the most unexpected places. In one room, at the intersection of craft and digital manufacturing, the design team at Nike imagined a future where materials could be reused and readapted through an installation where footwear emerged from rolls of paper, etched and gathered using origami techniques and 3D printing.
In the following rooms, Nike’s designers shared their wildest ideas for footwear. Navigating a display of the evolution of the Nike running shoe—who doesn’t have a nostalgic favorite with the Tailwind, Cortez, Air Max or Free?—the designers then returned to the original prompt of the Nike Free: running on grass with six handcrafted 3D printed prototypes. And the final room glowed under black light—a maze of brainstorming realized in three dimensions.
More details on the eight designer collaborations and each of the running installations:
Martino Gamper
Gamper captures the rhythm of “Natural Motion” with specially designed plywood drums stretched with Flyknit textile and secured with Nike laces. Gamper uses the vibration of sound as a poetic response to Nike’s prompt.
Bertjan Pot
Dutch designer Bertjan Pot’s oversized woven poufs employ flyknit fabric, Nike shoelaces and belts to upholster the inner tubes of a car, wheelbarrow, truck and tractor using hand-weaving techniques.
Greg Lynn
The Los Angeles-based architect may not have created the most beautiful chair but not many objects can claim to have an intelligent microclimate. Constructed from carbon fiber, integrated sensors can detect the body temperature of the user and then adjust the Peltier cooling modules or aluminum heat sinks accordingly.
Designed for athletes, the chair would be used to selectively cool and heat users between periods of physical activity.
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Clara von Zweigbergk and Shane Schneck
A delicate balance is Clara von Zweigbergk and Shane Schneck’s answer to the question of the Nature of Motion. A collection of stools from the Stockholm-based design couple is a playful take on the theme—a range of cork forms of varying heights and “postures” require a sitter to engage the body in varying ways in order to gain stability on these gently tilting, rocking, and precariously balanced seats.
Lindsey Adelman
Adelman’s work has long explored the tensions between natural elements and the man made. For Nike, she interpreted the principles of motion through the most elemental aspect of lighting—electricity. The light fixtures above are programmed with Arduino to react to the presence of people with a slight vibration when approached—mimicking the ways plants can open and close in reaction to the cycles of night and day.
Max Lamb
Lamb’s ongoing focus on the most elemental of materials plays in his installation for Nike. Three substantial monoliths cut from granite, aluminum and polystyrene effortlessly glide across a platform with the help of a thin film of compressed air (imagine sculptural air hockey).
Zaven
The elegant floor lamps from Venetian duo Zaven use LED lights diffused by Nike flyknit fabric. The stance of the floor lamps were inspired by the movement of athletes through space.
Sebastian Wrong
The London-based designer created a seat worthy for team players. Using the 1913 painting by Italian Futurist Umberto Boccioni’s “Dynamism of a Soccer Player” as a starting point, Wrong upholstered the communal chair with Flyknit fabric—the painting’s distinctive shapes emerge when viewing the seat from above.
Sensation Room
Moving through the designer interpretations of the Nature of Motion, the second half of the show focused on the evolution of the Nike running shoe. Taking the original inspiration for the first Nike Free shoe, running on grass, six in-house designers at Nike explored their own interpretation of a comfort concept in grass. As Nate Jobe, design director at Nike Sportswear shared, “The big idea here is iteration and prototyping, exploring concepts faster and faster. These designs are like sketches in process, rather than the prototype being made from a sketch. Rapid prototyping is a key element of the design process at Nike and we printed all of these on campus. This method dates back to the forefather of our company, Bill Bowerman, who always created by prototyping."
Although the six prototypes were enclosed in glass, visitors were encouraged to touch and feel the wall in front of the display which had different types of 3D printed "grass"—cut grass, putting greens, bent grass—that corresponded with the shoe display.
The NikeLab Free RN Motion Flyknit (shown above) is the most recent chapter in the story of the Nike Running Shoe. Since the original Nike Free was introduced in 2004, the NikeLab has been moving towards a more pure expression of a "second skin for the foot.” In Milan, they debuted the most recent iteration of the Nike Free—which incorporates a sole that expands and moves with the runner, mimicking the movement of a foot as it propels a runner forward.
As seen in the film, research and development from one part of the Nike business can become solutions in another. When designers were searching for a way to create breathable back panels in their backpack division, they developed a shape that would give high yields for the material. Eventually, this experiment became the foundation for the sole of the new Nike Free.
Visitors got a rare glimpse into the Nike innovation process in a black-lit room displaying a series of design concepts from the NikeLab team. Each designer was given a Nike Flyknit Superfly to experiment with. As Matt Holmes, Nike Design, Footwear Innovation, recounts in the film above, the brainstorm was really about, “Finding the magic in experimenting.” The result is wonderfully fantastical footwear ideas that could be the seed for future materials explorations at Nike.
The Nature of Motion exhibition hit the right notes balancing Nike’s own product story within the context of the world’s largest design event. The exhibition design allowed for a holistic story about innovation rooted in human (athlete)-centered design and materials exploration to emerge naturally and gave visitors a chance to understand their internal design process without the typical didacticism that can accompany explanations around design thinking.
More from Core77’s coverage of Milan Design Week 2016!
http://www.core77.com/posts/52153/Nike-Merges-Craft-and-Digital-Manufacturing-to-Explore-the-Nature-of-Motion