The New Raw

Connected plastic-recycling discourse with a specific manufacturing method and an aesthetic of layers, seams and printing paths. This profile examines origins, method, concrete projects and influence rather than promotional self-description.

Editorial thesis

The New Raw matters to VANSMITHLAB not as a catalogue of famous projects. Connected plastic-recycling discourse with a specific manufacturing method and an aesthetic of layers, seams and printing paths. The central interest is the mechanism: uses recycled plastic and robotic 3D printing to create furniture and urban objects while reducing moulds and manufacturing waste.1

Reader question

What exactly in the method of The New Raw changed professional practice, and why can that influence not be reduced to a recognisable style or client list?

Short answer

The New Raw was founded in Rotterdam in 2015. Its founders include Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki. Its practice works through a clear principle: uses recycled plastic and robotic 3D printing to create furniture and urban objects while reducing moulds and manufacturing waste.1 Connected plastic-recycling discourse with a specific manufacturing method and an aesthetic of layers, seams and printing paths.1

1. Origins and context

The New Raw was founded in Rotterdam in 2015. Its founders include Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki. The organisation emerged within a professional context in which tools, markets and cultural expectations were changing the definition of the discipline itself. The New Raw entered that process not as an isolated author but as a collective structure capable of turning a method into repeatable practice.1

2. How the method works

The core principle can be stated simply: uses recycled plastic and robotic 3D printing to create furniture and urban objects while reducing moulds and manufacturing waste. This matters because method defines not an exterior style but a way of making decisions: what to research, which constraints matter, where conflict lies and how form connects to use. The repeatability of that approach is what makes institutional influence visible.1

3. Print Your City: first anchor example

Print Your City. The project transformed local plastic waste into printed urban furniture and made the material cycle visible in public space. The example matters as observable evidence of method: the relationship between problem and form can be inspected in a specific object, image, space or system rather than accepted from studio rhetoric.1

4. Recycled furniture: second anchor example

Recycled furniture. Furniture explores how large-scale printing can use the variability of recycled feedstock as part of texture rather than hiding it. The second example tests whether the approach remains coherent when scale, client, medium and cultural context change. It is therefore evidence of a working system rather than an addition to a list of famous projects.1

5. A system rather than a single device

With The New Raw, it is more useful to look for a system of choices than one repeated visual gesture. Uses recycled plastic and robotic 3D printing to create furniture and urban objects while reducing moulds and manufacturing waste. Similarity between projects may therefore lie in research procedure, team organisation, material attitude or sequence of work rather than identical form. VANSMITHLAB records authorship through mechanism rather than superficial resemblance.

6. Influence on the discipline

Connected plastic-recycling discourse with a specific manufacturing method and an aesthetic of layers, seams and printing paths. Influence becomes visible when questions and working methods enter the practice of other authors, schools, clients or institutions. This does not necessarily mean direct imitation; more often the range of acceptable solutions and the professional vocabulary itself changes.1

7. Critical distance

An experimental material is not sustainable simply because it is biological or recycled. Feedstock, energy, lifespan, scalability and end-of-life all require evidence. This matters for The New Raw because reputation can turn successful decisions into universal mythology. VANSMITHLAB separates documented fact, interpretation and editorial judgment: influence is recognised without replacing analysis of limits, context and collective authorship.

8. Why the organisation matters now

The New Raw continues in Rotterdam across furniture and circular manufacturing systems.1 The relevance of the profile is not defined only by current commissions. The practice remains a useful comparison point because it reveals which professional questions survive changing technologies and fashions and which belonged to a specific historical moment.