“Feel as you watch, think as you walk” Fernando Pessoa

Designing for the human body, and against it, taking the human body as a data source, and reloading our mind to reconnect it to our feelings and ultimately to nature.

One’s walk rhythm suit is captures the rhythm of its user’s path and transforms it into a rhythmic sound diffused in the same collar of the suit.

One’s walk puts a rhythmic emphasis on the act of walking in a urban environment order to highlight the consciousness of our body movements in a meditative way.

While the needs for intelligent clothing are usually defined in areas related to intensive use of the body that is mainly SPORTS, HEALTH and MILITARY. My concern is to use technology in meeting other corporal uses and needs that I would call not as functional and more intimate. I want to produce content in our daily life. And here comes One’s Walk.

It is a urban outfit that creates an environment for its user dissociating him from the outside world. It is conceived as environmental clothing, a second skin that allows us to control our relationship to our urban environment by creating a sonic cocoon with our own rhythm. It rehabilitates walking as a source of inspiration and introspection in the same way the romantics described it although allowing this relation to the walk in a urban context while they thought about it in a natural environment. It transforms the sound of our legs passing one another in an electronic rhythm and can keep track of the parcours.
By replacing the sounds of the city by our own corporal rhythm one’s walk erases the distractions of the urban environment while keeping its context; it is a support for the Urban Flaneur that can be activated upon request.

The prototype is fully made of fabric and conductive yarns it only has electronic embedded in the collar that can be taken out for washing. The aesthetics refuses the tech aspect therefore technology stays invisible on this prototype. The focus of this prototype is not to technically enhance your well being it rather is to use technology to link the user back to himself, therefore technology needs to be invisible and my preference has gone to natural materials such as wool. The aesthetics focuses more on comfort for everyday use while conforming to city style and the possibility of being worn in a variety of contexts from going to the office to walking to a private appointment in a coffee place or at a regular event.

Walking has always been addressed as a source of inspiration concentration and meditation; Aristotle professed and conversed walking, while in the 18th century Rousseau talks about strooling as his source of inspiration, and Kierkegaard describes walking as a therapy as well as essential philosophic tool; Nietzsche conceived Zarathoustra while walking.

Several artists have conceived body extensions for the walk. In the series of his prototypes for functioning objects Fabrice Hybert has conceived 2 tools for the pedestrian, one being a crutch with a mirror at the bottom that lets you see what you shouldn’t but also centers you on the floor you are stepping on.

But as the 19th century artists promoted the walk as a wander, contemporary artists on the contrary would it be Beckett or Richard long prefer to deal with a more structured walk. Richard Long Walking a line in Peru Bruce Nauman Angle Walk Beckett Arena Quad I+II And finally many contemporary performers propose to discover step by step a urban path that the pedestrian appropriates while he invents it and which function is to produce a travel like sensation at the heart of the city One’s walk is at the crossroad of those two concerns while it intervenes on our relation to the city it also uses the rhythmic structure of the walk as a support for content.

The user in this was defined as an outsider utopian urban human of any age surrounded by the urban noise with a rich interior life.

User needs are defined as isolation meditation and daydream as well as a need for noise an urban stimulation.