Hasta La Ideas

American sports brand Nike has released a stripped-down running shoe that is designed to allow athletes to feel and respond to the ground beneath them as they would in bare feet.

The Nike Free Hyperfeel is the latest shoe to feature Nike’s Flyknit technology, where the upper is knitted in one piece and fits the foot like a sock, but has a lower profile with less cushioning than previous shoes in the Flyknit range.

The rubber outsole on the bottom of the shoe is just 0.7 millimetres thick, substantial enough to provide protection from sharp objects underfoot without reducing flexibility or responsiveness.

The raised squares on the bottom of the outsole provide grip, but are also designed to act like pistons, increasing the feedback the runner gets from variations in the surface they are running on.

“We’re trying to make a shoe that is just an extension of your foot”, Tony Bignell, vice president of Nike Footwear Innovation, told Dezeen at the worldwide launch of the product in Portland, Oregon. “It’s designed to amplify what the foot is already doing.”

The combination of the knitted upper and thin sole also make the shoe very light. A size 10 weighs just 180g.

“When you talk to athletes and say: “What do you want the shoe to feel like when it’s on your foot?” Most athletes will look at you and say: “actually, I don’t want it to feel like anything,” said Bignell.

Cushioning is provided by an insole made from Lunarlon, the sports brand’s proprietary shock-absorbing foam, which slips inside the shoe.

“The Nike Free Hyperfeel is really designed for runners that are looking for a barefoot sensation but with a comfortable ride,” Bignell explained. “We’re always trying to strike a balance between protection, which is important, and also sensation.”

Here are some more details from Nike:

The Nike Free Hyperfeel is created to intuitively move with the foot. It is inspired by Nike’s “Nature Amplified” design ethos — an approach focused on the body in motion and fueled by scientific data and athlete insights.

Research insights informed the precise placement of cushioning and outsole traction for a low-profile shoe that provides padding and protection only where necessary. A drop-in Lunarlon insole with flex grooves allows the foot to have direct contact with the Lunarlon cushioning. The waffle outsole is ultra-thin, allowing the foot to get closer to the ground.

Scientists in the Nike Sport Research Lab carefully studied which areas of the foot come into contact with the ground and absorb pressure, and which areas require traction. They used pressure-mapping technology and high-speed film to analyze the foot in motion.

The result is Nike Free Hyperfeel, a shoe that mimics the intricate workings of the human foot: Lunarlon foam replicates cushioned pads under the foot. The outsole protects like hardened skin on the sole. Dynamic Flywire flexes and contracts, inspired by ligaments.

The Nike Free Hyperfeel ($175) will be at retail in the US, UK and Japan beginning 5 September.

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shoe by Nike appeared first on Dezeen.

Slideshow: sports brand Nike have created a range of running shoes with knitted uppers made in one piece.

The Flyknit shoes have a light, almost seamless upper, knitted with different structures for different areas in polyester yarn with varying elasticity, thickness and strength.

Supportive cables are also woven into the fabric so the shoe fits snugly like a sock but gives support and ventilation in the appropriate areas.

The shoes produce less waste than normal running shoes since the material isn’t cut from larger sheets.

Nike also recently unveiled a wristband that tracks your movement throughout the day and gives you points for being more active – take a look here.

Here are some more details from Nike:

NIKE has engineered knit for performance to create running footwear that features only the essentials. Employing a new technology called Nike Flyknit, yarns and fabric variations are precisely engineered only where they are needed for a featherweight, formfitting and virtually seamless upper.

With all the structure and support knitted in, the Nike Flyknit Racer’s upper and tongue weigh just 34 grams (1.2 ounces). The whole shoe weighs a mere 160g (5.6 ounces) for a size 9, which is 19% lighter than the Nike Zoom Streak 3, a shoe worn by first, second and third place athletes in the men’s marathon at the 2011 World Championships.

While reducing shoe weight is one aspect of helping runners, the Nike Flyknit upper is also engineered for a precision fit, creating a feeling of a second skin.

An additional environmentally sustainable benefit to Nike Flyknit is that it reduces waste because the one-piece upper does not use the multiple materials and material cuts used in traditional sports footwear manufacture. Nike Flyknit is truly a minimalist design with maximum return.

The inspiration for Nike Flyknit was born from the common runner feedback, craving a shoe with the qualities of a sock: a snug fit that goes virtually unnoticed to the wearer. But all the features that make a sock desirable have proven to make them a bad choice for a running upper. An inherently dynamic material like yarn generally has no structure or durability.

NIKE embarked on a four-year mission of micro-engineering static properties into pliable materials. It required teams of programmers, engineers and designers to create the proprietary technology needed to create the knit upper.

The next steps were to map out where the specific yarn and knit structures were needed. Applying 40 years of knowledge from working with runners, NIKE refined the precise placement of support, flexibility and breathability – all in one layer.

The result is precision engineering in its purest form, performance on display. Every element has a purpose: resulting in one of the lightest, best fitting running shoes NIKE has ever made.

The Nike Flyknit Racer is the marathon shoe that the world’s best runners from all over the world, including those from Kenya, Great Britain, Russia and the US will wear in this spring’s marathons and in London this summer.

With the knowledge gained from working with the worlds best marathon runners, NIKE has also created an everyday running shoe, the Nike Flyknit Trainer+, which at 220 grams or 7.7 ounces, will bring the weight and fit benefits of Nike Flyknit to runners of all levels.

Both models will be available for all runners this coming July.

Nike Flyknit will debut in a collection that celebrates the performance attributes of the technology, while at the same time hints at its future capabilities.

Kingston University graduate Hannah Niskanen-Benady presented this series of side tables that incorporate knitted containers at graduate show New Designers in London over the weekend.

Niskanen-Benady designed the hallway or bedside tables for stashing small items like keys, coins and jewellery.

A hole in the walnut surface of each Safety Vase table holds the cashmere and merino wool vases, hanging below the table top.

New Designers Part 2 took place from 6 to 9 July.

See more stories about this year’s graduate shows »

Here’s some more information from Hannah Niskanen-Benady:

Hallway and Bedside Tables, Cashmere and merino hand knit framed by a solid walnut top and hand turned legs.

Experimenting with hard and soft materials and textures has been the muse for the Safety Vase series. The Safety Vase series empathises with wood and wool’s emotional and physical qualities to create a safe hideaway for one’s treasures. Knit holds connotations of safety, warmth and softness. Wood is a traditional furniture material that represents strength and longevity. The Safety Vase series explores and celebrates these qualities. It questions current furniture typologies and asks whether the emotional warmth of knit can be introduced to the hard world of wooden furniture.

A safe hideaway for those treasures that have a tendency to be misplaced has been created. The vase like form invites the user to touch and feel the softness of the wool whilst playfully hiding objects away, this furniture series is about experiencing the knit. It poses the question of why cant the first thing you touch when you wake up in the morning or come in from work be soft and comforting.

The knit is framed and contrasted by the hardness of the wood, both the minimal legs and the table top create a frame around the vase without distracting from it.

See also:

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1.3 Chair by Ki Hyun Kim	Hose Clip Shelving by Max Frommeld	From Here For Here by Ariane Prin

From runways to galleries, the philosophical needlework of a rising Italian artist

Aldo Lanzini‘s beautifully alarming crochet masks most recently made an appearance at Missoni’s Spring/Summer 2011 fashion show when the 30 ushers wore them to seat people. While the riotous colors and fantastical faces make compliment the Italian label’s renowned knitwear well, their bold expressions and strange forms of the maskes are a spectacle of their own.

Splitting his time between Milan and NYC for the past 15 years, Lanzini has been quietly building a large army of loud characters with his expressive needlework, explaining to Vogue Italia that his pieces are “the condition of contemporary man, some kind of conscious schizophrenia.”

Lanzini’s work can currently be seen at Milan’s Le Case D’Arte, where he transformed the gallery into visceral experience that amplifies the senses through visual, sonorous, tactile and olfactory elements. Dubbed “The Drop,” the exhibition speaks to Lanzini’s constant investigation of how the process of creation affects the everyday life and is on view through 11 December 2010.