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were something different altogether, a clear departure from millennia of tradi-
tional designs. One shoe was black, bristling with short quills that resembled
a porcupine's back or perhaps a bed of nails. The designer, Ross Barber, told
us that a few weeks earlier, these shoes strutted down the catwalk on the feet
of a male model.
Ross told us that what made his shoes unique wasn't their looks. It was the
engineering and design work that went into them. The company whose soft-
ware helped design the shoe—Within Technologies—creates design solutions
based on nature. For example one of Within's recent projects involved opti-
mizing the heat exchange of a metal engine block. The company's engineers
studied the low of water over the gills of ish to create an extremely eficient
engine block whose inner geometries were wavy and gill-shaped.
A 3D printed shoe designed by Ross Barber
at the London College of Fashion and optimized
by Within. The inner leather shoe was hand
stitched in to make the shoe more comfortable
when it was worn on the catwalk.
Ross pointed out to us that there was no glue holding his 3D printed shoes
together. They were printed in a single piece out of an extra-durable polymer
material that's usually applied to making industrial parts. To improve the
shoe's comfort factor, Ross hand-stitched in a leather boot upper from a men's
shoe shop. The result, a hybrid foot covering with a standard shoe top, laces
and tongue nested inside the 3D printed casing.
