Olaniyi Studio has an ongoing design research project around how agricultural waste, natural fibres, and root extracts can create living footwear using plant skin.

Plant skin is an internal structure element essential for all plant life to thrive. The chemical elements that are held within its internal molecular structure make it a perfect additive to the creation of plant-based materials with skin-like properties. When embed with material science field research additives, these materials react as if they were still plant skin in a living form, yet have new molecular properties of tension based on the natural additives that control their decay rate along with environmental fluctuations.

Agbo-Ola’s design aim was to create a multi-layered component-based series of entropic shoes that will decay as they are worn while providing medicinal properties to the foot of the wearer as well as having reactive exchanges with the environment. This process would happen when heat is accumulated in the shoe; the inner plant-based skin.