Nike A.I.R Prototypes

✦ A.I.R. (Athlete Imagined Revolution) is Nike’s newest frontier—where athlete truth, AI, and design converge to co-create speculative performance products. I was part of the design team behind the Eliud Kipchoge prototype, rethinking Nike Air for a world-class marathoner with insights only he could provide. Kipchoge drew a version of the concept himself but added a twist. He asked the team to connect the caved-out area towards the heel.

> “His reasoning was that the debris from unpaved trails would catch in the spring-like shape of the platform while he ran.”

The Kipchoge model is a radical reinterpretation of Air shaped by the athlete’s personal training insights, biomechanics, and deep environmental awareness. What began as a speculative design with a scooped heel transformed through Eliud’s feedback into a visible forefoot Air unit, tensile sap-like fibers, and a naturalistic rocker. The final design emerged from this intimate, iterative dialogue between athlete, designer, and AI.

Nike Article Link: Creating the unreal: how Nike made its wildest Air footwear yet