How does one give form to what can’t be seen? Nike does it at the Air Lab during Milan Design Week, with a helping hand from Dropcity, a new player in the city’s architecture and design scene, set inside a ~40,000 m² labyrinth of former railway tunnels under Milan’s central station. The lucky few who got in saw it as a one-week-only glimpse into a shared experiment. But don’t get too sentimental about the “pop-up” label, it’s already halfway to permanence. Air Lab is staying put at Dropcity once their doors officially open this fall.
Of course, the whole thing is based on Nike’s long-standing relationship with… well, air. Think nearly 100 never-before-seen prototypes. Air Archives tracing Frank Rudy’s early experiments. The development of Air Liquid Max, FlyWeb, Radical AirFlow, Therma-FIT Air Milano. Eight tool stations exploring air as a design medium, visualizing (air as evidence), forming (air as shape), deforming (air as transformation), pumping (air as expansion), suctioning (air as void), calibrating (air as impulse), cooling (air as subtraction) and blasting (air as force). The Air Library, a lounge that turns a massive bubble into something you can sit on. Workshops that somehow manage to challenge the power of air too, through robotics, music, even breathing.
What once lived inside the sole is now moving across the body, with Nike using air in garments that inflate, deflate, and adjust in real time. Take it from Radical AirFlow, a long-sleeve piece with small, cyclone-like cutouts that pushes air across the skin, turning it into a wearable cooling system. It’s tested under heat in a lab setup where athletes run in place while sensors quietly measure how hot they get. And it’s already picked up praise from athletes who crossed the finish line first wearing it, while everyone else in the background is still in short sleeves.
Who would’ve thought the invisible would be taken this far? “Nike has always had an experimental, hands-on culture of making, so on our first visit to Dropcity a year ago, it immediately felt both familiar and energizing,” says Golnaz Armin, VP, Design Studio Excellence. “Prototyping is a daily practice — an instinct to make, test and refine in real time, where ideas are meant to be worn, experienced and challenged through doing. As much as we embrace the latest digital capabilities, the craft of creating physical product through an iterative process remains essential.”
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