Assa Ashuach – Footwear Time Based Design

Project title: Footwear Time Based Design / Assa Ashuach at assastudio.com

The initial ReFream project phases focus on research, concept generation and some initial experiments. Meeting the project partners was very fruitful and in the past few weeks, we have managed to cover a wide array of topics related to the project challenges.

The project working title is ‘Footwear Time Based Design’, adding the element of ‘TIME’ in the context of new design paradigms that are dependent on technology and have a durational dimension.

It focuses on the development of shoes that study the way you live and become more adapted to your needs over time. It is about adding the element of time to the design process. In a sense, it is a Darwinian evolutionary approach to contemporary design.

Footwear, like most of the ‘wear’ family, performs better when adapted to its particular user. A shoe is both a piece of garment and a device that helps you live a better life. It holds your weight and needs to support your foot in a structured and ergonomic way. Its upper parts act a bit like clothes do, positioning you nicely as you walk in the urban landscape or dressing you up for a special occasion. The shoe is functional and sculptural at the same time. It has the potential to be personalised like almost no other object does.

In the current project, we will use user biometrics data and ergonomic parameters as the main drivers for the design development process. Together with our project partners, we will explore a wide array of materials and technologies to enable the notion of ‘evolutionary time-based design’ approach to take shape.

Our partners in this project are Stratasys, with their advanced multi-material and multi-colour additive manufacturing (3D printing) technology; Haratech with their 3D scanning capabilities and FFF 3D printing technology of a large variety of solid and semi flex materials, as well as a mix of butch production technologies, such as vacuum casting and polyurethane postprocessing. Finally, Profactor will be working with us on 3D printed electronics and with some experimental use of polyurethane 3D depositing technologies.

Our challenge together will be to develop a new contemporary approach to footwear design and manufacturing. We will create objects that are ‘alive’ in the virtual environment, and that can learn, grow and evolve over time, based upon users’ behavioural patterns and biometric data feeds.

Assa Studio limited is based in London and specialises in product design and industrial research within digital design and hybrid manufacturing. In the center of the studio developments is the digital object as file, and the virtual ‘life’ of an object, before it is physically produced. We are focused on user-centred design and with a co-design approach, user experience, both visually and physically is at the heart of our design process. User biometrics, ergonomics and behavioural patterns attributes are the essential elements driving our design process.

Assa Ashuach
Visit the EU ‘S+T+ARTS’ ReFream project at https://re-fream.eu/

Visit Assa at:
Website assastudio.com
Instagram @assaashuach
LinkedIn @assaashuach
Contact Info@assastudio.com

London from space by NASA Astronauts. The photograph ISS045-E-32242 was acquired in space, on September 27, 2015, with a Nikon D4 digital camera using a 400 millimetre lens.