Before founding his own studio, Michael DiTullo worked for nearly a decade designing shoes for Nike, Jordan, and Converse. So perhaps it should come as little surprise that when he was hired to design acoustic paneling for Kirei, he crafted it like one giant recycled shoe.
Its name? Air Baffle. And it’s the first time ever that a new recycled Nike material called Fluff will make its way into a commercial product outside the company.
When developing a new baffle for Kirei—a sustainability focused acoustic paneling company—DiTullo was searching for a way to make his design more eco-conscious. It already used a shell made from dozens of recycled plastic water bottles. But he wanted to fill the hollow container with something soft and environmentally friendly to absorb more sound, and perhaps mitigate waste in the process.
But as it turns out, the Grind program has many materials beyond its famous, rubbery “Grind” that it’s trying to find a second life for, including something called Fluff. Instead of being made from the bottom of the shoe, Fluff is made from the top of the shoe—a shoe’s “upper” that might have leather, canvas, and other soft components.
DiTullo realized that Fluff would work perfectly inside his baffle design. “It’s basically stuffing this thing full of cotton balls,” DiTullo says. But Fluff looked good enough that he didn’t want to hide it. At Nike, he learned that design should highlight the mechanical technologies inside a shoe, and he wanted to do the same with the Fluff inside Air Baffle. So he cut a long oval into the shell with the same shape as an Air Max air bubble. (Because acoustic paneling is often chosen by architects and interior designers years in advance of a building being opened, it may be a while before you actually see Air Baffle in person.)
As DiTullo points out, Nike’s Tinker Hatfield designed the original Air Max in 1987 after being inspired by the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris—which features an exposed, bubble-like escalator outside of the building.
“It’s ironic we have a shoe, the Air Max One, inspired by a building,” DiTullo says. “And now this building material [Air Baffle] is inspired by a shoe.”