This is a project I worked on during the Grand challenge at the Royal College of Arts together with students from 5 different departments.

Climate change is quickly becoming one of the most prominent problems of our generation. With little being done to correct the course of global warming we will soon be in a time that will be plagued by a rising sea level causing increasing precipitation and hurricanes. Cities like London can be expected to be incurred frequent flooding. As a team our goal was to start dissecting how people will move in this new amphibious world.

Our solution Hydroknit is a new morphable shoe that can adapt to dry, wet, cold, and hot conditions. In it’s activated state, in water or cold, the shoe inflates with the purpose of protecting your foot from both the entry of water, and also protecting you from hazardous items that you might not be able to see within water, and keep your warm. In its resting state the shoe deflates, exposing a number of open pores that allow the shoe to be breathable, dry quickly, and keep your foot cool. The Hydroknit is a proposition for one of the many product solutions that will unfortunately need to exist to help people move easily as environment stability slips away due to global warming.