Marloes ten Bhömer [2] is just 26, but she's been reinventing shoes her entire life. As a child, she started off by dismantling her mother's shoes, coating them in papier-mache and producing entirely new, exaggerated forms. Today, she's still doing the same thing, in carbon fiber and leather. She's particularly well-known for the latter, using a "lather mache" technique to create wildly layered, architectural shapes. She even uses laser sintering--a rapid prototyping technology that builds forms using powdered plastic. A laser passes over the materials, fusing it in shapes that are impossible to render in any other way. Above is a shoe Design fiends have noticed--this year ten Bhömer was a nominee in the prestigious British Insurance 2009 Design Awards. You can see the shoes above--molded from rubber right in the gallery, on the industrial assembly line you see below--through May 31, as the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne [3].

Related: The London Design Museum's 2009 Design Awards [4]
Related: Fashion Even a Geek Could Love [5]

[Design Yearbook [6] via NotCot [7]]