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/04ACT 2Experimental Footwear · Generative Design2023

JFW Shoes

Footwear grown by algorithm, not drawn by hand.

The question

What does a shoe look like when geometry is grown rather than sketched?

The problem / context

Footwear design leans on the hand and the eye, which means it tends to repeat familiar forms. Generative systems can find structures a designer would never draw - but they usually produce shapes that ignore how a shoe has to fit, flex, and be made.

The outcome / reflection

A set of experimental shoes for Jakarta Fashion Week whose geometry is generated computationally and then disciplined by the realities of the body and manufacture. The form is unmistakably algorithmic, but it is still a shoe.

// OVERVIEW

JFW Shoes is the double-threat thesis on a runway: industrial-design knowledge of how a shoe works, fused with computational form-finding that pushes the silhouette somewhere a sketch wouldn't go.

// MAIN IDEA

Generative form, human constraints

The interesting question isn't whether an algorithm can make a weird shape - it's whether a generated form can survive contact with a foot, a last, and a factory. The design process treats the generator and the constraints as a single system, so the strangeness is structural rather than decorative.

// DESIGN PROCESS

  1. Define the constraint envelope

    Encode fit, flex zones, and manufacturability as the rules the generator must obey.

  2. Run the form-finding

    Let the system explore geometry within those rules and select candidates with real presence.

  3. Refine for the runway

    Bring a designer's eye back in to resolve the chosen form into a wearable, showable shoe.

// TECHNICAL DETAILS

  1. Generative geometry

    Computational form-finding to grow the upper and sole structure rather than model it directly.

  2. 3D modelling

    Translating generated geometry into manufacturable surfaces and parts.

  3. Constraint encoding

    Baking ergonomic and production limits into the generator so output stays buildable.

// MAKING

Tool making & fabrication

Generated geometry was resolved into physical parts that could be assembled into a shoe sturdy enough to walk a show, bridging the gap between a digital field of points and an object on a foot.

// BACKGROUND

Made for Jakarta Fashion Week, the project used the visibility of a runway to argue that computational design belongs in objects we wear, not just on screens.

// WHAT DID I LEARN?

  • Constraints don't tame a generative system - they're what make its output meaningful.

  • A shoe is a brutal test of any form-finding method.

  • The hand and the algorithm work best in conversation, not competition.

// CREDITS

  • Laurensius Rivian Pratama - design & generative system

// WHAT’S NEXT

Push the generator toward materials and processes that could make a generated shoe producible at more than show scale.

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