What happens when you enlist four architects and a designer to create a shoe? That’s the task handed to Zaha Hadid, Ben van Berkel, and others. The result is an ethereal-looking sculpture wrought by selective laser sintering that vaguely recalls the giant dusters at a carwash.

Given free reign to “reinvent” the high-heeled shoe for Milan Design Week 2015, household-name architects Zaha Hadid, Ben Van Berkel, Fernando Romero, Michael Young, and Ross Lovegrove teamed up with United Nude, an expert in technologically advanced women’s footwear. The resulting edgy shoe is rendered in hard nylon combined with a soft rubber material—a technique which United Nude, through a longtime collaboration with 3D Systems, discovered as a solution for combining diverse printed parts to create functional footwear.

United Nude’s other footwear forays with 3D Systems include creating an interactive touchscreen console that enables users to 3D print their own shoe designs, and conceiving the 3D printed Coral Shoes, designed exclusively for Vogue Fashion Dubai Experience at Level Shoe District by Rem D. Koolhaas and his team at United Nude. Inspired by sea corals, the shoe consists of a 3D-printed wedge with holes through its sides, a small 3D-printed buckle and textile ribbons for strapping the shoe on.

Re-inventing Shoes is on show at Teatro Arsenale via C. Correnti 11 within the 5Vie Art + Design Quarter during Milan Design Week 2015.