Architecture…for the Feet

 If ever there was a painfully (excuse the pun) obvious link between Fashion & Architecture those magnificent structures on your feet were it.

Particularly among women shoes are often most structural & form altering pieces of clothing that you’ll ever own.

Even in it’s most basic form (the classic black court), the architectural qualities of the humble high-heel are breath taking. The simple flowing form & single steel column support; the shoe is literally the foundation of wearer, the supporting element in maintaining an elevated position.

So imagine an architect’s delight when our eyes fall upon the architectural footwear of recent times, the sheer euphoria of seeing exposed structure, flowing forms & the design of miniature spaces that your feet do not wear, but gracefully inhabit.

Of course many make the mistake of assuming that Architectural footwear is simply crazy-shaped shoes (it is not architectural just because it’s shaped like a sandwich), but in reality it is so much more. They are shoes with clean lines & flowing forms, materiality & free from frills, truly architectural footwear makes you look at the shoe & the space in & around it.

Take Tea Petrovic for example, having designed a shoe collection inspired by none other than Santiago Calatrava, his creations are so removed from traditional footwear it almost seems wrong to disturb the space within them with feet.

In true Calatrava style we see an array of clean white lines with rib-like detail, Petrovic makes the most of the context of the foot, filling & playing with all the available space & drawing the attention away from the foot & instead to the relationship between the shoe & the floor.

The shoe unlike most forms of clothing is an ideal precedent for an architect; for a shoe to work it must be structured to support the load of the wearer, it must contain a degree of internal space, it must have a strong & solid relationship with its context (the ground) and it must be comfortable to inhabit. All we have to do is alter what Marilyn Monroe once said "Let an Architect design the right shoes, and they can conquer the world."