Discarded Tennis Balls Cut and Rebuilt Into Shoes

Soroosh Riazi Isfahani makes shoes from discarded tennis balls. The method reads as simple: cut the balls open, flatten them, join them back together into something wearable. Underneath sits an accurate observation about the material. A tennis ball is a rubber shell with a felt covering, flexible and durable, already close in behaviour to what a shoe has to do.

Tennis balls are difficult waste. Rubber bonded to textile makes separation expensive, and a ball that has lost pressure is useless for play while remaining physically sound, so most are thrown away in working condition. Rather than break the material down, Isfahani uses it as found, and the geometry of turning a sphere into a plane does much of the design work: cut through the curve and what remains are curved panels well suited to wrapping a foot. The claim stays modest, which is its strength. This is a reading exercise more than a product proposal.