Rx Upshoes

 

Spring-loaded action added to women’s high heeled shoes makes for a high-powered pedestrian vehicle that lifts you higher and gets you where you’re going faster. Inspired by the urban walking woman, her notorious investment in her footwear, and especially her desire to live more sustainably.

 

HOW IT WORKS

A carbon fiber leaf spring in a c-coil shape is bolted to the truncated heel of a shoe. The kit includes a pair of springs, attachment component, and instructions. The kit model allows for spring rate tailoring based on the wearer’s height, weight, and lifestyle. The wearer brings the kit and her favorite pair of heels to her neighborhood cobbler who affixes the springs, hotrodding her shoes. 

WHY WE LIKE IT (aka The Goods)

The Upshoes spring kit acknowledges that the term ‘transport’ is interpreted more widely than in industrialized nations. Walking, cycling, animal-driven vehicles and even wheelbarrows are transport too, and must be considered in transport planning. Upshoes provide an alternative transport technology that decreases the consumption of fossil fuels in urban areas where walking is an efficient way to get around. 

Tailored to the individual, the kit meshes with today’s market dynamic which caters to individual consumer’s emotional desires. The kit model encourages shared ownership of specially designed consumer goods, transferring responsibility of consumption and its environmental impact onto the individual. The act of upgrading such an intimate artefact as women’s shoes encourages reuse and repair as a part of everyday practice. Integration of the cobbler tradition promotes alternative marketing organization, the capillarization of the market into the hands of each and every consumer, and the creation of collaborative consumption.   

Rather than resorting to nostalgic references to suggest environmentalist ideals, Upshoes are environmentalist fashion that is progressive and stylish, visually promoting a sense that environmentalism is about boldly marching forward and treading new territory.

Perhaps most importantly, Upshoes make getting around more fun! Upshoes remove the urban commuter from the automobile cage and transform her into a walking machine, reconnecting and reenchanting her with her surrounding environment.   

 

WHY CARBON FIBER?

Carbon fiber is not the first substance that comes to mind when thinking of renewable materials. Yet because of its outstanding properties combining hardness and elasticity with very light weight, carbon fiber is being increasingly employed in sustainable design products such as wind turbines and fuel efficient automobiles. It is unrealistic to equate sustainable design with the strict use of 100% renewable materials. Instead it is useful to exploit new technologies to re-imagine the way we live on a global scale.   

 

Potent Quotes:

Designers must change consumer preferences… choosing not to possess must be a value for the new century and new technology has to be seen as repairable technology. Good design embodies social principles.  -Adams

The real challenge is to find a way of dismantling the consumer society and replacing it with a society rich in satisfactions and pleasures which make shopping and material acquisitions pall by comparison. -Christensen

Consumption is the moment in the process where symbolic exchanges that determine and reproduce the social code occur, where there is an active appropriation of signs, not the simple destruction of an object. -Poster

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 3:33 pm and is filed under HiHeeling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.