Participating In The Greatest Story Ever Told:
From Roots To Soles And Back
A journey of designing footwear that feeds back into the earth
Written By Aisha Kuijk
Nature ebbs and flows, winding into itself, creating cycles of life, death and rebirth. Nature’s cycle of life, death, and rebirth serves as a muse for reimagining human-made products.
Footwear concept artist Aisha Kuijk embodies this approach, collaborating with major brands and innovators including Timberland, and Vivobarefoot, and pioneering material innovators, like Mycl, Bananatex and Woolmark to reimagine shoes so they might coexist with nature. In this piece, Aisha’s curious and energetic perspective guides us through the journey of designing footwear that feeds back into the earth, inviting us to see the potential for regenerative cycles in everyday objects.
From Roots to Soles and Back
I’m walking through the forest, a fallen bird’s nest catches my attention. A marvel – a perfect sphere, its interior lined with mud, the outside decorated with moss strings like nature’s own jewellery.
This nest, now on the forest floor, isn’t trash. It’s becoming a new home for tiny creatures, then it’ll become food for the soil. This is exactly what I want for shoes, or any tool humans use for survival and desire. This seamless cycle is nature’s way of ensuring that nothing is ever lost, only transformed. How can we make shoes part of this big renewal story, not just another thing to buy and throw away?
Sketching Soil
My process starts outside, in the forest, in the heath, feeling, seeing, smelling the leaves and all the non-human life around. With my sketchbook and imagination activated the trees become rubber trees surrounded by nettles and grasses, the underground mycelial networks deeply entangled with the roots. It’s all there, the essence of shoes. Puffy mycorrhizae (fungi roots) for the upper part – like a second skin, latex tree sap becomes rubber for a protective sole, and the long fibrous grasses spun into thread to hold it all together and embellished with intricate embroidery.
From Doubts to Roots
But then the doubts creep in, persistent like roots seeking water. Will toxins leach out during decomposition? Are there glues strong enough for city streets but still biodegradable? How do I balance durability and biodegradability? It is bigger than the abundant forest in my imagination, I need to think wider!
We need to think beyond one shoe. We need a whole forest of change, not just one little sapling. But how do we nurture this growth? How do we lower the barriers and inspire countless creators, brands, and companies to join this natural revolution, making regenerative footwear the new global standard?
I take a deep breath and look around. There’s a baby fern, covered in aphids, but still growing strong. Every challenge is a chance to innovate. Like the forest floor, teeming with countless organisms each playing a part in decomposition, I’m part of a larger ecosystem of creators. Perfection isn’t the goal here, progress is.
I grab my phone, realising I’m connected to material scientists, biodegradability experts, and fellow designers. Together, we’ll tackle these challenges step by step.
Yellow, the Colour of Metamorphosis
What if we use mushroom materials that help the shoe break down at the end of its life? Could we use plant dyes that are attractive to both human emotion and the taste buds of microorganisms?
Energised by the prospect of collaboration, I return to my sketch. Imagine a shoe living with someone for years, treading city streets and forest paths, feeling rain, sweat, and soft moss. But like everything in nature, it can’t stay a shoe forever. Like yellow autumn leaves, it’s not an ending, but a preparation for renewal. Here’s the part that really gets me excited, imagine the shoe meeting the same fungi that create it. The mycelium embraces the soft parts, slowly breaking them down. Any lingering toxins are neutralised in this fungal feast, and gradually, our shoe transforms into a rich, living substrate. Just as the yellow leaf feeds its tree, our decomposing shoe feeds the soil. As I sketch, I can almost see a birch tree sapling – my all-time favourite – pushing through the soil, its leaves unfurling, ready to begin the cycle anew. Nature’s endless cycle of renewal, right there in my design.
This whole process mirrors the metamorphosis I witnessed with that bird’s nest. Our shoe is just one character in an endless story, a cycle as old as life itself, yet revolutionary in the world of footwear. I look at my design, seeing both its potential and its flaws. Each iteration of this shoe will teach us something new, helping us move closer to truly regenerative design. It’s not perfect – but then, neither was that bird’s nest. Yet in its imperfection lay its beauty and its harmony with the natural world.
I close my sketchbook and smile. Tomorrow, we start prototyping. And who knows? Maybe someday, someone will stumble upon the remains of this very shoe on a forest floor, marvelling at how seamlessly it’s returning to the earth.
’til Nature is normal,
Aisha
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