Sneakerheads, it’s time to plan a trip to Germany: The Vitra Design Museum is hosting a special Nike exhibition that features never-before-seen artifacts from their design archives
Shoes are nothing like rocket science—or so we think.
After a year of research, American curator, writer, and historian Glenn Adamson likened Nike’s history of design and innovation operations—which he had condensed into an upcoming exhibition and book—to NASA.
Called “Nike: Form Follows Motion,” the exhibition features never-before-seen pieces from Nike’s secret design archive, including sneaker prototypes and original sketches. The location of the archive is confidential, and accessible only by a select few. But for the first time, the archive welcomed a group of curators to go through over 200,000 of Nike’s rare artifacts to create a special exhibition on the brand’s design history.
For a year, Adamson and his group of curators researched and delved into the vast Nike archives to curate the exhibition, which follows Nike from its roots in 1964 to its current status as one of the world’s biggest apparel companies.
The exhibition shows Nike’s development not just as a company but as a brand invested in sports innovation.
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“Having now learned so much about the company, I can say that I’ve never experienced any design thinking that was more intense, multivariable, creative, or complicated than this,” Adamson says in an interview.
“Pretty much anything that you see coming out of Nike now that has technical innovation will have some aspect of that sports research in it. I don’t think most people are even aware of this—I certainly wasn’t—and it’s quite revelatory, especially if you get to go there. We’ve devoted a whole gallery of our exhibition to that kind of materials research.”
The museum is also crowdsourcing videos from Nike users worldwide to highlight the brand’s cultural impact. The videos will become part of the museum’s exhibition on-site and online.
This is the first-ever museum exhibition dedicated to Nike. The exhibition is set to open on Sept. 21 at the Vitra Design Museum in Rhein, Germany, and will run until May 2025.
The exhibition vernissage on Sept. 20 will also feature a special talk featuring Nike’s chief design officer Martin Lotti. Then on Oct. 17, another talk (in German) on Nike’s role in sneaker culture will be held, featuring leading figures in Germany’s sneaker scene, such as sneaker store 43einhalb managing director and Sneakerized magazine founder Mischa Krewer, photographer and sneaker collector Julia Schoierer, and the Sneakerness sneaker convention founder Sergio Muster. Admission to these events are free, but requires registration.
A book about the exhibition (also featuring the same title) will then be released on Dec. 3.
