Bela - 3D printed shoe

Concept

More than half of the shoes with broken soles will be disposed, so there is a huge amount of waste, even bigger in the area of sneakers. Derived from this I defined the three most important criteria for my concept: it should be bespoke, since it’s a virtual created shoe, it should be recycled, so I focused on monomaterial use and it should be suitable for the masses.

3D Printing

In order to achieve the best possible closed material circuit I thought about the four elementary steps from production until recycling. Of course this is an illustration and maybe will never be completely achieved, because there will be abrasion and inevitable loss of pairs, but it could already mark a big step in the sneaker industry.

Scanning

To enable the customer to scan the own foot to receive a bespoke shoe I worked in simplifying and reducing the steps as far as possible. There- fore I just created the option to upload it directly in the shopping process and saving it for later purposes. I also had a research which scanning app could work the best, and I found one that requires only three photos.

Subscription

My Concept is a subscription model so the customer gets not only a shoe but more an experience of a long lasting companion. So it can be updated and is always working out perfectly. It also ensures, that customers stay in the material circle and don’t change to other pairs, that would break the resource circuit.

Process

Ideation

To create the best design, I used VR glasses and Gravity sketch. So I could start with creating as many sketches and concepts in the ideation phase as possible. It helped me to figure out forms in the three-dimensionality immediately and create numerous minimally differing variants. Other than creating just the most important sideview, as common in the industry.

Prototyping

The start was to create my own last together with the orthopaedic shoemaker Martin Jäger. This gave me complete control about the shape. I printed out all the little steps and parts of the shoe before going to the complete model, to save time. Because I was using a personal 3D printer some parts took up to 60 hours to finish printing.

CAD + Grasshopper

The biggest part of the design process was to create the custom insole and the lattice structure. I also added the heel pad to prevent the foot from slipping out and enhancing the comfort, while reducing the risk of in injury. The outside part is completely reduced and defined through the simple parting line the reminds in common shoes.

Insole

Essential for the lattice structure in the sole was the alignment to the sole. Therefore I wrote a grasshopper script that morphed the cells in the best way to the foot. A big advantage of 3D printing is the ability to have perfect transitions between the different zones at the sole, that are required for the most comfortable walking experience.

This bachelor thesis was developed in cooperation with STUDIO F. A. PORSCHE and supported by PUMA and Martin Jäger at
Bauhaus University, Weimar.