With Nike: Type Follows Movement, the Vitra Design Museum will current the primary ever museum exhibition about Nike, the world’s most revered sports activities model. The exhibition will discover the corporate’s five-decade ascent from a grassroots start-up to a worldwide phenomenon. The main focus is on Nike’s design historical past: from the corporate’s beginnings within the Nineteen Sixties and the design of its well-known “swoosh” emblem, to iconic merchandise comparable to Air Max and Flyknit, and present analysis dedicated to future supplies and sustainability. Following the Olympic and Paralympic Summer season Video games in Paris in addition to the European Soccer Championship in Germany, the exhibition will emphasize the significance of sports activities for design innovation and social change, whereas additionally shedding mild on the just about legendary devotion to sneakers and sportswear in common tradition and social media. The exhibition has been initiated and produced by the Vitra Design Museum and curated by Glenn Adamson.
Nike, named after the Greek goddess of victory, has grow to be the world’s main sports activities model since its incorporation in 1972. As we speak, it is usually the world’s largest attire firm, with an annual income of greater than $50 billion. However Nike isn’t solely a profitable firm; it’s a entire design tradition. The proof may be seen virtually regardless of the place you go: a dynamic show of revolutionary supplies, efficiency options, and high-impact graphics. On the firm’s headquarters, simply exterior Portland, Oregon, merchandise are developed by way of a singular mix of scientific research, sports activities analysis, and aesthetic sensibility. Tons of of designers there collaborate with specialists in different fields, from materials engineering to biology to physique mechanics – and, after all, with lots of the world’s greatest athletes.
Now, for the primary time, the exhibition Nike: Type Follows Movement affords a glance behind the scenes of this distinctive design laboratory whereas additionally inspecting Nike’s involvement with technological innovation and social change. Many of the displays are sourced from the Division of Nike Archives (DNA), the corporate’s personal archive, which contains greater than 200,000 gadgets. The exhibition is the primary to current a curated choice from this archive to the general public. Among the many displays are rarities and one-offs together with experimental prototypes of iconic sneaker fashions just like the Waffle coach, the Air Pressure One, and Shox, in addition to unique design research for footwear and attire. The artistic contributions of particular person designers are highlighted all through, each these inside the corporate like Diane Katz, Tinker Hatfield, and Eric Avar, and exterior collaborators like Marc Newson, Comme des Garçons, and Virgil Abloh. Athletes — from the world’s best to the on a regular basis — have additionally performed an particularly vital position in Nike’s design course of by bringing their very own experiences and necessities into product improvement.
The exhibition is structured in 4 chronological sections. The primary, “Observe”, delves into the Nike archive’s earliest holdings. The corporate was based by two males: Phil Knight, who had been a runner in faculty, and his former coach Invoice Bowerman. Their early workers — and most of their clients — have been primarily critical amateurs and collegiate runners, with a couple of professionals serving to to advertise the model. Advertising was hands-on, with gross sales representatives taking footwear to trace meets. On this formative interval, Nike established certainly one of its key design ideas: at all times hearken to the voice of the athlete. On this a part of the exhibition, guests will encounter tales from the model’s earliest days, comparable to the event of the primary Waffle Sole in Nike co-founder Invoice Bowerman’s kitchen or the story of the Tennessee State College Tigerbelles, a staff of black feminine athletes through the civil rights period in the USA.
The second exhibition chapter, “Air”, seems on the Eighties, when Nike achieved take-off. By means of endorsements with star athletes like Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, and LeBron James, the corporate established itself as a main mover in common tradition. On the similar time, Nike transcended its origins in monitor and discipline, increasing first into basketball, then tennis, world soccer, skateboarding, and different sports activities. Its designs turned fixtures of popular culture, because of a artful understanding of the street-style panorama. Classics just like the Air Pressure 1 and the Air Jordan have been featured in imaginative TV commercials (principally by the Portland-based advert agency Wieden + Kennedy). On the similar time, the corporate was investing in a brand new expertise: capsules of pressurized fuel that supplied cushioning with out including weight. Initially hid inside footwear soles, Nike Air was first made seen within the 1987 Air Max, opening up a brand new chapter within the firm’s design historical past. Within the exhibition, the fascinating evolution of the Air sole is illustrated with quite a few artefacts from the preliminary improvement course of, together with air bag prototypes and a testing machine created by engineer Frank Rudy, who first developed the expertise and proposed it to Nike.
The third area within the present, “Sensation,” explains a few of the analysis and improvement behind Nike’s designs. Right here, guests get an perception into the center of the Nike Sport Analysis Lab, one of many world’s largest and most superior services for the research of the physique in movement. Because the Nineties, this technical analysis has more and more targeted on the advancing athletic potential, resulting in merchandise just like the Nike Free, which simulates the texture of barefoot operating, and the Vaporfly, developed as a part of an effort to interrupt the two-hour barrier within the marathon. The gallery exhibits the influence of fabric improvements like Flyknit on each efficiency and sustainability and explores Nike’s present efforts to cut back its personal local weather influence by way of moral materials sourcing and round manufacturing strategies. Nike’s analysis into plastic recycling can be examined on this part, with examples together with Nike Grind —a granulate of recycled gadgets used for a wide range of functions — in addition to the corporate’s journey from the primary recycling tasks within the early 2000s as much as present initiatives.
The fruits of the exhibition, in Room 4, displays on Nike’s collaborations with exterior designers, athletes, and its personal public. The gallery is a showcase for 50 examples of intriguing and typically outrageous footwear from Nike’s historical past, some developed by way of collaborations with style designers and creatives, others inside community-based tasks. The room additionally examines Nike’s eminent position in pop and counterculture, which is illustrated with examples of music movies or Social Media footage that present Nike’s crucial position in shaping and reflecting new tendencies and values. This part underlines that the symbiosis of design and sports activities has at all times been about extra than simply efficiency. Additionally it is about reflecting beliefs of the human physique, beliefs of well-being, variety, equality and, in the end, the deeply human goal to push the boundaries and uncover new territory.
Mateo Kries, director of the Vitra Design Museum: “For a very long time, we have now needed to prepare an exhibition on design and sports activities. After we approached Nike, we realized extra about their unbelievable design archive — an enormous treasure that had by no means been offered in an exhibition. That was how the thought of this exhibition was born. The present affords a singular alternative to concentrate on design by way of the lens of a single model, and to show fascinating objects that illustrate the method of design improvement — a few of which have by no means been proven earlier than.”
Glenn Adamson, curator of the exhibition: “Along with our curiosity within the evolution of iconic merchandise, we’ll have a look at the bigger social and historic context surrounding Nike. Over the previous 50 years, sport has had an incredible influence on our notion of the human physique, past the monitor and the court docket — for instance, on conceptions of gender roles. Our exhibition will present how the corporate has each instigated and responded to those altering dynamics, from its preliminary emphasis on efficiency and optimization to better variety and inclusion. By taking a look at Nike’s design methods, we achieve insights into that larger cultural image.”