This activity uses the deconstruction and reconstruction of used shoes to unlock a perception of matter and activate a sustainable ‘material-driven’ approach to design. More than just upcycling, the activity defamiliarises everyday objects, enabling even the most abject, invisible, redundant or mundane of materials and tools to become creative resources and pathways to innovation.

This activity can be done individually or as a group. Reflective notes and photographs are encouraged throughout. Virgin materials other than cotton thread should not be used (eg. tape or glue) and sketching should be avoided (unless for analysis).

• Find a used pair of shoes ready for disposal.

• If working in a group, re-distribute the shoes to generate random mis-matched pairs. Matching pairs can be used if working individually or to reduce the complexity of the activity.

• Using a blindfold, analyse your shoes one at a time using any senses except sight. Try to forget their purpose, style or brand and note what they FEEL like (heavy, light, rough, smooth, hard, soft etc.). Can you feel any special features? Do they make a sound or have a smell?

• Remove the blindfold, sketch and photograph the shoes.

• Deconstruct your shoes using basic ready-to-hand tools, eg. scissors, craft knife, quick-unpicker or pliers. Consider what interventions they invite or permit, eg. unravel, unpick, pull-apart or cut. Using a ‘robotic’ approach, keep deconstructing and resist thinking about what the materials might become until you have generated a good collection of component parts.

• Lay-out and photograph the resulting materials.

• Reflect upon the deconstructive process to consider the following: What did you do and why? How did the shoes and materials respond? Did they cooperate with, or resist, your interventions?

• Using the tools available to you, explore how your materials might now be reformed, joined or adapted to create new wearable forms. Allow the material qualities to guide your direction, maintaining a sensitivity to what the materials will or won’t let you do.

• Use your own body in the context of its social, cultural and physical environment to explore your new forms, and to test wearability, composition and use. Reflect on what worked successfully, what didn’t work and what alternative strategies or techniques might be used to overcome the challenges you encountered.

• Make as many artefacts or accessories as necessary to use ALL your materials.

To delve deeper into the theory that inspires this activity you may consider reading the following publications:

• Barati, B. & Karana, E. (2019). Affordances as Materials Potential: What Design Can Do For Materials Development. Journal of Design, 13, 105-123.

• Glăveanu, Vlad P. 2012. "What Can be Done with an Egg? Creativity, Material Objects, and the Theory of Affordances." Journal of Creative Behavior 46 (3):192-208.

• Sherlock, Alexandra; Joannides, Tassia; Jagiello, Pennie, 2022. ‘The Affordances of Affordance Theory for Sustainable Fashion Design Pedagogy’, in: International Foundation for Fashion and Textile Institutions (IFFTI) Conference, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, 5-8 April 2022.

• Sherlock, Alexandra, 2017. ‘This is Not a Shoe’: An Exploration of the Co-Constitutive Relationship Between Representations and Embodied Experiences of Shoes. PhD, University of Sheffield, UK.

Click here to download the assessment rubric for your own adaptation.

We recommend adapting criteria 3 and 4 to be built into any subsequent assessments to assist the further development of these sustainable design capabilities.