ADIDAS | FUTURECRAFT 4D | 2018
Where the Idea of "Printing" a Shoe Sole Leads / adidas "FUTURECRAFT 4D"
There's a running shoe whose midsole is "printed" using nothing but light and oxygen. No molds, no tooling required. 17 years' worth of running data took shape directly as a shoe.
The problem
Up until then, adidas had only been able to treat 3D printing as a prototyping-stage technology. It lacked the speed and strength to be used as a final part in mass-produced shoes. The light-curing process held by Silicon Valley's Carbon turned out to be the key that broke through that wall.
The insight
A running shoe's midsole has to deliver conflicting functions—cushioning, rebound, and stability—all from a single part. Traditional mold-based manufacturing couldn't produce the kind of fine-grained structure where firmness changes from spot to spot. So they flipped their thinking and made the printing process itself the product's strength.
The idea
Drawing on 17 years of accumulated running data, they designed a midsole built from a lattice structure. With no molds and no prototyping, the whole thing is formed as a single piece just by exposing resin to light and oxygen to cure it. It's woven from more than 10,000 thin struts, and by varying their density across different parts of the sole, the shoe delivers both cushioning and stability.
What happened
It won Gold in the Product Design category and Silver in the Innovation category at Cannes Lions in 2018. In January of that same year, it went on early sale at three stores in New York.
Afterthought
What's impressive is that they committed fully to calling it "printing" a shoe—not "sewing" it, not "molding" it. And this isn't just a showpiece made for advertising; it actually ended up as a real product sold in stores. I don't usually give a second thought to what's inside a shoe, but this midsole is the one thing I'd want to put behind glass and put on display.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2018
