“These jazz women were pioneers, and huge proponents in disseminating jazz and making it a global art form,” Hannah Grantham (musicologist at the National Museum of African American History and Culture) tells The New York Times, whose list of 10 overlooked women through the genre’s history includes pianist Lovie Austin, trumpeter Valaida Snow and violinist Ginger Smock. Though an inordinate amount of attention is placed on men in jazz, women played crucial roles on stage and behind the scenes since the genre’s beginnings—whether as composers, performers, arrangers or artist managers. “Buffeted by sexism from venue owners and record companies in the United States, they often went abroad to pursue careers in Europe or even Asia,” writes Giovanni Russonello. Valaida Snow—nicknamed the “Queen of the Trumpet” and “Little Louis”—toured for years from China to Egypt, Japan and beyond. Grantham adds, “I don’t think they’ve been given enough credit for that, because of their willingness to go everywhere.” Read more at The New York Times.

If you’re up to date on sneaker culture, there’s a pretty slim chance you’ve missed the news about Nike‘s upcoming Space Hippie shoe collection release this summer. The announcement made waves across the internet for its distinctive look and what it means for the company as a whole. The shoe’s ultimate design goal? To create a product made entirely from factory waste. The release is an ambitious milestone in Nike’s history, kicking off their foray into a full embrace of circular economy principles within their own product manufacturing line.

Given Nike’s place in the design pecking order (and their own global production line’s ecological footprint), the release is a call to industry at large to start prioritizing substance over “perfection”. In a recent promotional video someone from Nike’s team even states, “If they look weird, it’s because they’re made of trash.” The refurbished look of the shoe is ‘imperfect’ in a way that speaks to the DIY fashion culture gone mainstream thanks to designers like Virgil Abloh and companies like Nike. The name “Space Hippie” comes from the design team’s original DIY inspiration—resourceful astronauts living off limited materials in space. It’s an image that serves as an analogy for how we ought to make the most out of excess materials on Earth to curb climate change acceleration.

To learn more about this landmark shoe project, we had a virtual chat with Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, Sustainable Design Lead of Nike’s NXT Space Kitchen, the team responsible for Space Hippie and other ambitious projects like the Nike Adapt self-lacing shoes. In our interview, Murphy-Reinhertz explains how the team came up with the futuristic concept and shares takeaways with our audience of designers on how to embrace more sustainable design and production practices.

Noah Murphy-Reinhertz, Sustainable Design Lead at Nike’s NXT Space Innovation Kitchen

Core77: Can you explain your role at Nike and what that entails?

Murphy-Reinhertz: My title is Sustainable Design Lead within the NXT Innovation Space Kitchen. This is the team in Nike where we look at questions with a lot of unknowns around them. We don’t know how long it’ll take to find the solution, we don’t know what sport or what kind of activity some of the solutions might be applied to. My role was created about four or five years ago, and the goal was to try to bring sustainability into the most early exploratory stage of innovation at the company. So my job is just to think about the most far out there reaches of sustainable product.

How the idea behind Space Hippie begin and when did you start brainstorming the idea for the shoe?

The project started a couple of years back. There was already work going on around sustainability, but one thing that was very new was the analytics team’s research on carbon impact of materials and processes down to an individual product basis. They shared with us the carbon impact of different pairs of shoes, and one of the things I realized in having that conversation was that it’s actually been a while since we’ve created the lowest carbon footprint shoe.

Nike’s full Space Hippie shoe line features four distinct styles. Each of Space Hippie’s four silhouettes provide a unique fit option — traditional laces, lace-less and Flyease.

There’s this idea within Nike that the best is temporary and records are meant to be broken; so seeing that record immediately inspired me to say, how can we do better than that? And by talking with a lot of people ultimately the answer was, we’ve got to go back to material. The truth is, the materials that have the most impact today are things that have already been used once and are going to get thrown away.

That was really the beginning of the process. It wasn’t a brief—it was just our own inspiration to say, if we’re going to make the lowest carbon footprint product or material that Nike has done, we’re going to have to work with waste. So how can we embrace that waste and create something from it?

Can you break down the origins of the various materials comprising the shoe?

It was an exciting moment when we learned waste was going to be the most important feedstock we could leverage for this product, because it guided us toward these ideas of circularity. But we didn’t want to engage in circularity just to keep things out of the landfill—that’s a great goal in and of itself, but we want to recycle in a way that also reduces the carbon emissions we’re putting out in the creation of those materials. So with each of the waste materials we looked at, we wanted to use as little energy and as little reprocessing as possible to turn it back into something we could use.

There are three main elements of the shoe: the first one is the Space Waste Yarn. This was the biggest breakthrough in terms of waste reuse because we’ve been using recycled polyester for a really long time in Flyknit—I think the number of plastic bottles recycled into yarn is in the billions. We wanted to do even better than that, which was a big challenge. We took textiles that were already out there—scraps from the factory floor, t-shirts that had already been used, pieces that would normally just head to landfill intercepted nodes. We took some of that recycled polyester as well, and from those materials we created a staple fiber. Spinning these waste materials together uses very little heat and no dye at all. So the yarn is 100% recycled material, but also about 70% less carbon emissions than a typical recycled polyester.

A material breakdown of the sustainable elements that make up the Space Hippie sneaker

Then there are the other core parts of the shoe. There’s the Crater Foam, which is to me one of the most fun elements. This is basically taking a normal Nike foam and then putting in 15% reground rubber. Reground rubber is literally as though you’re making a waffle and the batter that comes out the side of the waffle press, that’s the excess rubber that’s produced in our factories as we’re making shoes. So we’re taking that rubber, grinding it up and incorporating it into the crater foam at 15%. It reacts with the foam during the molding process and you get this really unique look. Every time a shoe comes out of the mold, each one is different.

The last really cool part of this is what we’re calling the “Zoom X Eco”, and these are the leftover scraps from those elite performance running shoes like the Vapor Fly NEXT%, the Alpha Fly. When you make those parts it’s, again, kind of like a cookie cutter process. By taking leftover parts, treading those up and then compressing each one in a mold, you get this cushioning system that’s 100% recycled material but it’s made from that elite level foam.

What were some of the biggest challenges you came across with the production of the shoe? I’m sure that using recycled material brings another level of complication to the manufacturing process.

One of the most hilarious moments in this process was the first time we went to our partner factory in Vietnam. The people who work there laid out all the samples and started to go through and point out all of the reasons why there were too many flaws for any of these shoes to ship. And we just said, “Oh no, this is perfect! This is exactly the way they should look.” And the relief just washed over everybody’s face. So there was this really interesting challenge of needing to recalibrate the factories’ mindset around what is and isn’t a perfect product. We’re so used to achieving perfection through a lack of variance; you get a design, you finish the design and every product after that should look exactly the same. But here it was about getting our factory partners to embrace the idea that each one of these was going to be a little bit different.

Space Hippie shoe style 1

Space Hippie shoe style 2

Another challenge was that the supply chain to reuse some of this material didn’t exist when we started this shoe. You know, we’ve been doing the Nike Grind reuse the shoe program since the early nineties by beginning to collect shoes and recycling them. And we’ve developed a really fantastic supply chain for reusing the grind that comes out of that process; we know how to build sport courts out of it, how to get it into home insulation, carpet underlayment, a lot of things like that. But when we said we want to take post-consumer textile and bring them back and create yarn, that was a kind of reuse that really hadn’t been done at a massive scale before.

So creating those supply chains to embrace that end part of circularity was a really new challenge and we wound up bringing in people from procurement, from all facets of the business to stand up this new supply chain and make it possible for Nike designers now to say, “I want to select those post-consumer and post-industrial materials and have them much more widely available.” This was the guinea pig project for this larger plan of repeating this over and over again.

We’ve had about 75% of all Nike products include some recycled material in them, whether slightly visible or completely invisible. But the aesthetic challenge of this project was to say, how do we open up that aperture and say, what does it look like when we use 100% recycled material?

Do you have any takeaways from this project that you could share with other people who want to manufacture more sustainable products?

I think there are two key lessons that really came out of this whole project. One is that the tools that are available to us today are the best place to start. What we put in our project manifesto was “start where you are, use what you’ve got.” We can begin taking action on this now.

The second is to really embrace the constraints of those materials and allow constraints to inspire innovation, new style and new applications. Nike does that on a daily basis by looking at the constraints of performance. And we took that same mindset and said, let’s look at the constraints of low carbon emissions. Let’s look at the constraint of only recycled materials and let’s be inspired by that. And I think that kind of lesson for any designer is super valuable.

I’m curious to hear more about the specific style inspiration for the Space Hippie concept. How did you ultimately land on certain design styling decisions?

There was this moment with the waste materials that led to the concept and the name. We brought this bucket of trash to a group of other designers and said, “This is the stuff that we have to work with, let’s just see what we can create with it.” And the way that we were putting everything together was very scrappy—using tape, shock cord and tying things together just to get a sense of how the material looked with each other. But one of the designers on the team, she said, “Oh, this is like, you’re repairing your shoes in space.” And that just led us on this riff of things, saying it’s like in The Martian where he is farming potatoes after the space station is blown up. How would you fix your shoes? He’s living off the land. It’s like he’s a hippie, a “space hippie”. So that moment of just bouncing all of those ideas around was when the name came out.

Space Hippie shoe style 3Space Hippie shoe style 4

And that led us to just think a little bit more deeply about what it means to run space programs and invest all of this amazing technology in exploring the universe. In the same way that you have limited resources on Mars, we in fact have limited resources here on Earth. So let’s take that same approach to efficiency, to resource utilization and look at things locally.

There were two things [driving our design aesthetic]. One was the materials were so amazing that we really wanted them to speak for themselves—people out there see the shoe’s material and can intuitively understand there’s something different about it. The second part was trying to choose every single process based on its carbon impact and how little impact we can actually have.

So we only used additive processes throughout this. The first one of those that’s the most significant is the Nike Flyknit. I had seen the first Flyknit during the 2012 London games, and that was actually this moment that inspired me to look at Nike as this company that was reinventing how things could be made. As a designer, that was a super amazing moment for me. So we knew we wanted to use Flyknit as a process that doesn’t produce any waste, it’s just this process of additive yarn. But everything else is also a no-waste process. So the swoosh is a great example of this—we did that through embroidery so there’s zero waste, zero pattern cutting there. All of the webbings are just measured to length and then cut.

Nike’s design approach seems to have evolved over I’d say the past 5, 10 years with even more experimental efforts, and it’s difficult to imagine a radical shoe like this being as coveted as it is in this particular moment. I’m curious if you are able to answer why stylistically and philosophically you think that this shoe is a perfect fit for today’s design ethos?

There’s something that’s really key with this idea of looking back at this 10 years of evolution, but really we’re talking about almost 20 years of evolution of what sustainability is. And there was so much for us to draw on in creating this shoe and kind of thinking about what we had already done and how we could do even better. In addition to the first Flyknit shoe in 2012, there was Nike Considered in the early aughts, which was a whole collection around trying to eliminate adhesive and make shoes that could be easily repaired.

I think the most important thing that came to us as we look back on that heritage of sustainability and how we can push the boundary a little further today was to bring in this kind of sense of optimistic urgency. And really this idea that we have to do something now, but we also have to do it in a way that engages people’s imagination and desire to push this conversation forward and participate in this effort along with us to combat climate change. It’s a topic that can be very heavy and not leave a lot of room for hope and optimism.

But for Nike the key to this athlete’s spirit is what’s possible. And so the design really was meant to just bring that out. Like, let’s show people that by embracing the constraints in this, we can have a lot of fun. We can create new styles, we can create new experiences and we can imagine a really positive future through using these tools that make a more sustainable product.

Nike’s Space Hippie shoe collection is set to release in Summer 2020

A manufacturing expert tears down a Tesla Model Y, revealing an impressive “mega casting” and pointing out some other surprises along the way (like a foam cube stuffed inside the body).

Sandy Munro may have one of the coolest jobs in the world. A pioneer and expert in lean design and manufacturing, the CEO of Munro & Associates runs a team of industrial wizards who help companies around the world find better ways to build things.

During the lockdown, Munro’s been tearing down a pair of Tesla Model Y’s and YouTubing his findings. In episode #26 (embedded in full at the bottom of this entry), he shows you the crazy “mega casting” inside the car that is unlike anything you’d see in a gasoline-powered car.

It’s fun to watch because he’s scribbled notes all across the car, like a design professor’s critique, calling out both the good and the bad.

Also fun is when he discovers a foam cube shoved behind a subwoofer as a crude (but presumably effective and cost-effective) sound dampening device.

Enjoy:

The third lecture from today’s collaboration between VDF and reSITE sees Chris Precht of studio Precht explain his mission to design buildings that serve both environmental and emotional needs.

Precht, founded by Chris Precht and his wife Fei Precht, explores low-impact building technologies and ways of making buildings more self-sufficient.

Examples include its proposal for a timber housing tower that integrates a vertical farm and an off-grid timber micro-home.

It recently designed Parc de la Distance, a proposed urban park that enables people to maintain social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Precht started his talk at 2019’s REGENERATE conference by explaining the impact his father Albert Precht, a keen mountain climber, has had on his work.

“I think that my dad had a very direct connection to our natural environment,” Precht said. “He feels connected to his own senses, his own feelings, to his own emotions, but also to history, nature, and to the environment. And I think there are a lot of lessons for architects to learn from that.”

Architects today are mostly building to make a profit

However, Precht feels that architecture today has lost touch with its emotional and environmental purpose and instead is driven by money.

“We built the pyramids for gods,” Precht said. “We built castles for kings. We built palaces for queens and now we are building mostly to make a profit in an economic system.”

His and Fei’s studio instead chooses to focus on connecting its work to the environment. One example is its Wild Child Village in Ecuador, which was built using a modular bamboo system. Joints are tied with ropes, which means the materials can be reused.

“It connects people back into this reality, into an objective reality of nature, and of the environment,” Precht explained.

He argues that architects need to look at the environment more through the eyes of children.

“If we do that, I think there are a lot of spaces we create that are more discoverable and more explorable for people. And I think to discover and to explore is something so fundamental, that is somehow stuck in our DNA, like my dad did for 67 years.”

“We can think of the building as an ecosystem”

After starting its office in Beijing about six years ago, Precht moved back to Austria about three years ago to get an improved quality of life.

“This was a difficult decision, but it was a very important one because we are working long hours and we are constantly undervalued,” Precht said.

“I actually think that architects wear black not out of a minimalistic fashion statement, I think we wear black because of an emotional statement. I think that we are very sad inside and the black is somehow a cry for help.”

Today, the studio works on a number of projects that aim to reinforce a connection to nature, including The Farmhouse, which combines modular homes with vertical farms, and a 3D-printed pavilion made out of sand.

“We can think of the building of the future differently,” Precht said. “We can think of it as an ecosystem by itself. We can listen to the birds and bees nesting into our buildings, and we can smell, taste, and eat parts of our buildings.”

He believes his generation of architects is not driven by styles, forms or intellectual theories. “I think that our generation has much bigger problems than that, climate change, global warming pollution and urbanization and AI,” he said. “These are all tasks now of an architect.”

About reSITE

reSITE is a non-profit organisation with a focus on rethinking cities, architecture and urban development. Its aim is to connect leaders and support the synergies across real estate, architecture, urbanism, politics, culture and economics.

reSITE’s flagship event is held in Prague, but it has also held events in Lisbon and Berlin. reSITE was founded in 2011 by Martin Barry, a landscape architect originally from New York.

About Virtual Design Festival

Virtual Design Festival, the world’s first digital design festival, runs from 15 April to 30 June 2020. It aims to bring the architecture and design world together to celebrate the culture and commerce of our industry, and explore how it can adapt and respond to extraordinary circumstances.

To find out what’s coming up at VDF, check out the schedule. For more information or to join the mailing list, email vdf@dezeen.com.

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Daily coronavirus briefing: today’s architecture and design coronavirus briefing includes hacks for hands-free door opening, the Serpentine Pavilion postponement and the widths of New York’s sidewalks.

Widths of New York’s sidewalks mapped to demonstrate difficulty of social distancing

Urban planner Meli Harvey has created an interactive map (shown above) that tells users the widths of all of New York‘s sidewalks, or pavements, to show whether it is possible to effectively social distance on them (via Sidewalkwidths.nyc).

Five handle hacks for hands-free door opening

To lessen the threat of spreading the coronavirus, designers are creating door-handle adapters that remove the need for direct contact. Here are five of the most interesting door-handle hacks (via Dezeen).

Ron Arad launches “Smile for our NHS” fundraiser with masks featuring famous artists

Celebrities including Stephen Fry, David Baddiel and Elizabeth Hurley have modelled face masks designed by Ron Arad that will be sold to raise money for the UK’s National Health Service (via Dezeen).

Dyson says its ventilator not needed by UK government

James Dyson has told employees at Dyson that the ventilator his company has developed at the cost of £20 million is not needed by the UK government as demand has not risen to expected levels (via BBC).

Artists display messages for key workers on Times Square billboards

Times Square Arts has coordinated a program to place 22 works of art, chosen by New York design museum Poster House and Print Magazine, on billboards in Times Square and other locations in the city (via AdWeek).

Serpentine Pavilion 2020 postponed until next year due to coronavirus

The opening of this year’s Serpentine Pavilion, designed by South African architecture studio Counterspace, has been postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic (via Dezeen).

Coronavirus has “blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation” says MIT Technology Review

The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the USA’s lack of technology innovation, with America’s tech firms responding weakly to the virus, says David Rotman writing in the MIT Technology Review (via MIT Technology Review).

Antony Gormley shares seven-day Instagram diary of life in lockdown

British sculptor Antony Gormley is among a handful of artists who have collaborated with White Cube gallery to document their life and work in lockdown via Instagram, in a bid to stay connected during the coronavirus pandemic (via Dezeen).

Keep up with developments by following Dezeen’s coverage of the coronavirus outbreak. For news of impacted events, check Dezeen Events Guide’s dedicated coronavirus page.

The post Daily coronavirus architecture and design briefing: 27 April appeared first on Dezeen.