• Home
  • FD
  • BD2008
  • Cane X TPU: Parametric Explorations in Hybrid Footwear

Pranav Jain

BD2008

Cane X TPU: Parametric Explorations in Hybrid Footwear

In my project this semester, I investigated the structural and aesthetic integration of 3mm cane with 3D printed TPU within the domain of footwear. The focus was on material behavior, structural integrity, narrative and structure driven forms and the use of digital tools to achieve said forms. 
WHY CANE? 
 The choice of cane wasn’t just about sustainability or tradition—it was intuitive, even impulsive at first. But through making, failing, and testing, that intuition proved valid. Cane became not just a material, but a constraint, a collaborator. It resisted easy shaping yet also encouraged certain curves, which forced the design to emerge honestly, structurally, and spatially—from the material outward, not just from sketch to form. 
It was a process of learning through making and exploring (physically and digitally), testing limits of what is aesthetically acceptable and structurally feasible all while having the iterations tell a story.


View Additional Work

Report Content

Initial exercies and deciding domain. The intital exercise was done in collaboration with Eraianbu Sundaram

Exploring Cane and TPU

Exploring anatomy and developing the kagome midsole

Riffing ideas

Early concepts

Loop concept to 'Skeletor'

Building the prototype

Skeletor is an experimental material study driven footwear born from structural instinct and anatomical chaos. It’s meant to feel raw, rugged, biomechanical as well as mystic and dark (Primal takes the centre over gothic in this shoe). The cane loops in the experimental midsole act like tendons holding onto rhythm and seamlessly integrate into the insole and gives an unconventional near floating visual experience and a bouncy physical experience. The perforated TPU tongue with sharp yet organic curves morphs into a spinal midrib out of which cane ribs emerge which gives it an animalistic identity. “ It’s post-function. It’s ghostform. It’s the foot’s last layer.”

The way forward - I

The way forward - II