The New Raw turns harbour rope into rocking 3D-printed stools

Rotterdam studio The New Raw has 3D-printed public seating from discarded marine rope salvaged from the city's harbour — a project now shortlisted for a 2026 Dezeen Award in the sustainable design category.

Called Buoy, the furniture series returns a stubborn waste stream to the waterfront it came from. The New Raw founder Foteini Setaki collected plastic ropes from Rotterdam harbour that were formerly used for managing boats and would otherwise have gone to waste.

The material route runs through three locations. The ropes travelled to Maastricht, in the south of the Netherlands, where workers cleaned, shredded and mechanically recycled them into pellets. Back at The New Raw's Rotterdam studio, the pellets were melted and 3D-printed layer by layer into stools.

"The material fuses as it is deposited, so no separate binder is needed," Setaki told Dezeen.

Why is marine rope hard to recycle?

Setaki explained that marine ropes resist conventional recycling because they contain a cocktail of materials that accumulate various residues over time. Careful selection determines which ropes carry the highest polypropylene content for conversion into recycled pellets.

The stools use no virgin plastic. A small percentage of additives supports long-term outdoor use, including UV protection. "These additives are compatible with recycling the material again," said Setaki.

Each seat takes a subtly different hue, determined by the colour of the original rope rather than added pigments or coatings. Every stool was engraved with its batch and production number, then placed by Rotterdam harbour.

What does the rocking base do?

The stools carry spinning top-style pointed bases, so they rock when the user sits down. That gentle motion mimics real buoys bobbing on the water.

"We wanted the seats to carry a recognisable link to their maritime origin, through both their shape and the slow movement of floating buoys," explained Setaki. "Borrowing that movement brings a playful quality to sitting, and the connection to the harbour becomes something you can feel."

What changes for other designers?

The New Raw frames Buoy as a model for designers seeking local, surplus resources to contextualise their practice with the place they work.

"Working with a local waste stream is a way of strengthening the relationship between the city and its harbour," said Setaki. "The material's journey and the experience of sitting make that relationship tangible. This approach could also be adapted to other harbour cities, starting with their own discarded materials and local networks."

The New Raw, founded in 2016 and run by Setaki and Panos Sakkas, 3D-prints locally sourced plastic waste into furniture.

Buoy competes on the 2026 Dezeen Awards shortlist against projects including a cement-free architectural material made of waste date pits, and lighting for an Australian bookshop made from its own faulty publications rejected due to printing errors.

For practitioners, the model is transferable: identify a harbour city's discarded materials, sort by polymer content, and print on site — a closed loop Setaki argues other port cities can replicate with their own local networks.