In 1971, while watching his wife Barbara prepare waffles, Bill Bowerman thought that the design of the plate would be ideal for a sole that would be as light and grippy as possible. The rest is history.

“Such a symbol of innovation and maverickness, with the idea of putting rubber into it and make something better for the athletes. We still use it at the campus as a symbol of how you stay grounded to authenticity”. 
(Martin Lotti, Nike Chief design officer)

It was the aeronautical engineer Frank Rudy who proposed an air cushion as a shock absorber for running shoes, and it was Tinker Hatfield who had the idea to make it visible, inspired by the exposed structures of the Centre Pompidou: the Air Max 1 was born in 1987.

“It’s literally a tool, a cushioning platform that is still as good as in day one when it was invented. And we can improve upon it, yet the premise of it is the same. All the energy you put in, you get out, and it finds application in lifestyle, but also in the highest performance products. Of 18 of the last performance Olympic medals, 15 of them were won on Air”. 
(Martin Lotti, Nike Chief design officer)

The technology that debuted in 2012 is based on generating the upper part as a single piece of strong, lightweight fabric, with yarn density varying from point to point.
“When you can  engineer to the exact specification  down to the pixel, rather than taking rolled goods and gluing together, etc. It's a new method of make that literally revolutionized  traditional shoemaking, and not just limited to  footwear”. 
(Martin Lotti, Nike Chief design officer)

In 2024, Nike teamed up with 13 of the world's best-known athletes, coupling their emotions with data collected by the Nike Sport Research Lab, to develop 13 new Nike Air model concepts through artificial intelligence.

“It’s less about tools. It's more about methodologies and approaches. So I think we’re in a whole new game when it comes to leveraging tools that you cannot even imagine yourself”. Martin Lotti, chief design officer for Nike