“Form follows function and footprint”
– John Hoke, Chief Design Officer di Nike
The new direction and respective design logic of Nike is concretized in the ISPA project (2018) → which is totally oriented to the environment, with the aim of moving away from the commercial response in favor of creating products that are honest in their intentions and that respond to an increasingly urgent need: reducing the environmental impact in every area of the production sector.
The experimental expression of the ISPA philosophy is realized on the basis of four fundamental actions: Improvise, Scavenge, Protect, Adapt. Improvisation allows you not to stop at the first solution, to always find new ones. Scavenge (literally digging through the waste) is also necessary to find the best materials to solve problems and, at the same time, not to create new ones. In the Protection phase theory becomes practical and the final solution becomes concrete application. Until, at the moment of Adapt, all solutions are pushed to the maximum potential.
Based on this philosophy was born “D-ISPA-ssembly Park”, the multisensory circular installation in Milan, designed by Nike for the Milan Design Week 2022. The installation presents two projects that are projected to a circular future: Nike ISPA Link (June 2022) and ISPA Link Axis (2023) →. These latter are shoes that take advantage of a modular design exclusively interlocking, in addition to the use of 100% recycled materials, such as the polyester of the upper or the material of the midsole, obtained from unused Air Bag. Axis Link ISPAs are designed to be completely disassembled thanks to the principles of geometry, which are the only thing that holds them together.
This new projection orients the sector towards modular and sustainable sneakers, composable today, but above all de-composable tomorrow. This need to transform the design approach also in the fashion sector is closely linked to the current debate on environmental sustainability, which sees us all no longer as passive spectators but active protagonists of the future.