bruno truong creates recyclable shoes with engineered materials

bruno truong creates recyclable shoes with engineered materials
all visuals courtesy of bruno truong

rarely do designers have as much insight to what they’re working with — literally — as ex-materials engineer bruno truong. after a quasi-industry shift, truong found himself questioning the link between the two professions. he began to explore, eventually finding himself asking what would happen if the designer was able to not only create physical objects, but materials themselves, therefore introducing functions into the very fabric developed.

separate parts combine to create the shoe

structuring materials at the micro and nanoscale — to create better so-called metamaterials — is a task undertaken by research labs the world over. however what’s viewed as a tremendous achievement from a scientist’s eyes, usually becomes another novel thing in the ever-growing arsenal at designers disposal.

thanks to the shoe’s lacing system, the sole doesn’t need to be glued, making it easily recyclable

truong, with help from materials experts justin dirrenberger (ENSAM) and benoit roman (ESPCI) of paris, and corentin coulais (leiden university) of the netherlands conducted a wide-ranging research project that explores meta-materials through a product design oriented lens. experiments led to the creation of many interesting samples that have a similar mechanical behavior to that of foams, without actually being foams. made of polyurethane, the soft structures are manufactured using fused deposition modeling — the only additive process that can print closed cells. further testing showed that the raw element was highly capable, allowing for hundreds more variations using nothing more than the single unit.

material explorations 

to demonstrate practical potentiality of the material truong co-designed a shoe with the help of sports podiatrist guillaume kergozou de la boëssière. the chosen object was the most obvious choice, given its need for both elastic and dissipative properties at very specific points underfoot. various compositions were split into regions and 3D printed to form the piece.

crush test to observe mechanical properties of created component 

all layers are split, which was done so to improve the shoe’s recyclability. consequently, every individual part is detachable. the heels and toes are maintained by two separate parts, which are plugged into the sole by users. a third piece holds the laces, and clamps down across the foot. lastly, a specialty sock fitted specifically for the shoes ties things down further. as result, the internal structure of the sole is invisible and highly functional. 

soft structures obtained with an additive manufacturing process 

patterns are precisely applied to the adequate zones (ex : damping pattern for the heel)

internal structure

slices of the sole

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: nick brink | designboom