Woodwalk by Paul Coudamy

French designer Paul Coudamy of art collective Elegangz has created these wooden shoes for footwear brand K-Swiss.

Coudamy describes the project as a “temporal contraction in which the Swiss country shoe of 19th century is crossed with the urban shoe of the 20th century.”

The shoes are hand-carved and produced in a limited edition of 25.

Photographs © Benjamin Boccas

Here’s some more information from Coudamy:

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Woodwalk
design by Paul Coudamy,

25-pair limited edition of wooden sneakers by Paul Coudamy for K-SWISS, hand-sculpted and numbered.

The starting point of reflexion and creation for a K-Swiss design was to ask the sneackers’s original essence to propose an unique prototype.

The concept of Woodwalk is founded on a principle of distortion, a temporal contraction in which the Swiss country shoe of 19th century is crossed with the urban shoe of the 20th century and a space contraction.

We can find this process in the conception. In fact, Woodwalk’s design is created by computer and permit a matchless precision of the drawing. Woodwalk is a craft production, means that every model are hand-sculpted in wood. Woodwalk is a critical design.

With the reinterpretation of the usual sneaker which is a city dweller’s symbol, Woodwalk changes the codes of the traditional sneaker. This meeting deals with the confrontation between the sens of sneaker and the natural matter of wood. A part of Woodwalk’s concept is to ask the meaning of walking in the city and to invite people reconsidering the urban lifestyles.

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