Interview with THE NEW RAW: 3D printed design between the Netherlands and Greece

Central Image: The-New-Raw_PotsPlus-© Stefanos-Tsakiris

The New Raw studio was founded in 2015 by architects Foteini Setaki and Panos Sakkas in Rotterdam, Netherlands. From the start, the studio’s ambition has been to reuse discarded materials and objects through design and sustainable practices. Plastic waste is upcycled by TNR to create furniture and decorative objects, deploying technological means like digital design and robotic arms for their construction. In 2018, they started an innovative project entitled Print Your City in Thessaloniki, in which they transform plastic waste into furniture that is installed in the public space and is available for use. The New Raw spoke to us about this particular project but also about the ecological importance of approaching each material as raw material.

The New Raw at Print Your City - Zero Waste Lab ©Stefanos Tsakiris

How did your search for more sustainable use of plastic, through its re-appropriation, come about?

Plastic is a valuable material that should not be thrown in the trash so easily… that’s something that still bothers us and sets our practices in motion. Our research resulted from our interest in participating, through design and innovation, in the efforts that can shape a better and more sustainable future for all of us.

How do you incorporate digital fabrication into your creative process? Does it enhance functionality or does it serve more the management of the material in order to render the new form?

The New Raw - Pots Plus © Stefanos-Tsakiris

We are a research & design studio that designs and manufactures its ideas. Robotic arms are our production tools and recycled plastic is our raw material. These two determine to a very large extent our production capabilities and keep the design of our objects up-to-date. Since our inception in 2015, we have started to develop our own tools and methods of design and production. This is something we continue to do, exploring the limits of the possible and always looking for surprises.

Could we say that 3d printing is a modern tool that has come to replace traditional handmade construction?

The New Raw - Print Your City in Thessaloniki for Coca-Cola Greece ©Stefanos-Tsakiris

3D printing is a contemporary tool that has come to complement traditional manual construction and expand its capabilities through the potential of digital mediums. In the case of recycled plastic, 3D printing becomes a tool that can transform a purely industrial material such as plastic into a 'digitally' handmade material.

By creatively recycling plastic you create new spaces with objects that are more permanent and versatile. Do you think that plastic should return to the public space, which introduced it in the first place? What is the consumer-creator-user relationship?

The New Raw - Ermis Chair Limited Edition - (c) Michele Margot 

We believe that the way we use plastic in our everyday life should be improved. The misuse of single-use packaging and the way it is designed and produced lead to mountains of plastic waste that can’t be upcycled easily and even then, it is to a small extent. For us, recycled plastic has the potential to offer an alternative solution for public space equipment as a weather-resistant and low-maintenance material, thus turning a problem faced by cities into a new opportunity for a more sustainable future. This idea can be implemented under the right conditions and we tested this for the first time in 2018 with Print Your City in Thessaloniki. With Print Your City we examined how within a 15km radius a part of Thessaloniki’s plastic waste came into a full circle and with the participation of the residents was transformed into public seating with plantations.

The-New-Raw_PotsPlus-©Stefanos-Tsakiris

The Print Your City project is an ambitious plan for the redevelopment of the city ​​through its own energy (consumption). Do you think that in this way, other than the aesthetic and resilient re-shaping of the public space, public awareness about ecology is raised?

Yes, exactly! Through our work, we want to show that recycled plastic can be a raw material that -with the use of technology- could be transformed on site into objects that everyone can use and many times participate in their formation too. In this way, we want to propose a new, more sustainable and participatory way of shaping the seating areas and plant containers that we encounter in the public space of our city.

The New Raw PotsPlus-© Stefanos Tsakiris

Are you working on something new? Would you like to tell us a few words about your next project?

Yes, the ones we can mention are a reception furniture piece for the entrance of an office building in Utrecht (NL), a series of "embroidered" panels for a store in London (UK), a series of public furniture for outdoor exercise in Rotterdam (NL) and the first Print Your City since the start of the pandemic!