Minimalistic running for many people was a fad in the mid 2000s, for me, its what made me become a runner. I started barefoot running at age 12 and never looked back. 

Currently writing my dissertation in the planned obsolesce of running shoes I came to understand the negatives and complications with barefoot running. Why Vibram Five Fingers have been sued, why Nike tells you to only run a mile in their Nike frees. From this research I developed my solution, and this is now a working process due to be completed May 2020 for graduation.  

My proposal is to create a minimalistic shoe in which the sole gradually wears away as your feet get stronger. You would develop a relationship with your local cobbler, in which they would remove pieces of your sole. This would all run alongside a barefoot training program. 

This will be my first time designing a shoe and to understand how they are created and how the removal of the sole would work I started collecting and dissecting shoes.

My first idea was to create little pins in each shoe, that would have different melting points. To remove an area of the sole you would put it in the washing machine and heat the shoe. I moved away from this, deciding that using a cobbler was more sustainable. Shoe craft is becoming a lost art and being able to create a system that supports small local businesses is invaluable. 

I am starting to prototype after Christmas, with aims to create my prototypes fully from old trainers, this is more cost efficient for a student like myself and also compliments my research question about planned obsolesces in running shoes nicely.