THE FOOTWEAR OF TOMORROW: Project J

The Dutch minister of education, innovation and science, Jet Bussemaker, left, sought out Nachtigall and his ETN colleagues to create a futuristic outfit for a political event in 2015. Nachtigall focused on the shoes, and others on the dress. Collaborating with an industrial designer, he scanned the minister’s feet with the goal of making footwear entirely adapted to her frame, style of movement, and active schedule. The shoes were formed out of a polyurethane resin called Filoflex, using off-the-shelf software (for Solemaker, they created their own); printing them took over 100 hours. Inspired by force fields, the soft, wavy lines move, allowing greater flexibility. They also matched her garment, with lines that traced the body’s contours in a way similar to a CAD patternmaking program. “We wanted to reflect the generative algorithmic parametric nature of the dress,” Nachtigall says. In theory, the shoes were supposed to improve the minister’s gait. Bussemaker called the outfit “surprisingly wearable.” The Telstra Perth Fashion Festival in Australia and the Cube Museum in California have both exhibited the shoes.