What comes after Air, Boost and decades of foam? Springbok was an experiment in imagining a genuinely new architecture for performance footwear, moving away from nostalgia, collaborations and endless iterations of familiar ideas. I was always fascinated by technologies like Nike Air, but often disappointed by how little they felt like the idea they represented. Mass produced cushioning has to accommodate an enormous range of bodies and running styles, inevitably making it a compromise.

Springbok explores a mechanical alternative. Four independent spring blades form the sole, each individually tunable to the runner, allowing the characteristics of the shoe to respond to weight, foot strike and running style rather than relying on a single standardised setup. For me, with flat feet and a heavy heel strike, that could mean a very different configuration to someone who runs predominantly on their forefoot. More than a new cushioning technology, the project was about asking how a different performance principle could create an entirely new architecture and aesthetic for footwear.

Developed through to a full scale appearance prototype.