These Shoes Will Help You Tackle Extreme Weather

Climate change has been a topic of increasing concern for years. As this conversation continues, questions about how humans will adapt to our changing environment have arisen, and Icelandic designer Sruli Recht has designed a number of innovative shoes to combat harsh weather conditions.

The Damage capsule collection boasts “shoes for a post-traumatic future,” and features three unique concepts, tackling everything from extreme flooding to intense heat. Meant for extreme flooding, the Venice Heel comes in high tide and low tide variations, featuring a jade and turquoise marbled design. Functioning as part stilt, the Venice Heel fits over the wearer’s current shoe, enabling them to navigate rising water in urban areas.

The Phase Change shoe contains a cyborgian boot aesthetic with white and silver marble, and is meant for intense heat. To protect the wearer from this weather, the shoe is meant to cool the user by using a vascular system powered by body heat. Recht explained that the heat-powered concept could cool the wearer by inventing a “phase change” substance that is liquid below 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) and a gas above that temperature.

“By running a series of flexible pipes under the hot footbed, the body heat would turn the fluid to a gas, which would then rise and flow into tubes on the outside of the shoe, thereby cooling outside the body. It would then flow back down again to the footbed as a cold fluid, ready to continue the cycle, like an organism’s circulatory system.”

The last shoe, Unbalanced, is meant to aid balance and mobility, featuring a spider-like design. Best suited for rocky terrains and uneven surfaces, the concept was conceived to aid aging populations that usually struggle with balance.

All of the designs were created using 3D printing and were finished by hand. Developed in partnership with INDUSTRY, a consultancy based in Portland, Oregon, the concept will not be manufactured, but rather sold as digital art NFTs.

Reservations and bidding for the NFTs have begun on the foundation.app platform.

In related news, NASA warns that a “wobble” in the Moon’s orbit may worsen climate disaster.