Scrapped marine rope recast as stools that rock like buoys

Rotterdam studio The New Raw has used discarded rope salvaged from the city’s harbour to create a series of 3D-printed public seating for its waterfront.

Called Buoy, the urban furniture project is shortlisted for a 2026 Dezeen Award in the sustainable design category.

Photography

To create the stools, The New Raw founder Foteini Setaki collected a series of plastic ropes from Rotterdam harbour, which were formerly used for managing boats and would’ve otherwise gone to waste.

The ropes were then transported to Maastricht, in the south of the Netherlands, where they were cleaned, shredded and mechanically recycled into pellets.

After returning to The New Raw’s Rotterdam studio, the recycled plastic pellets were melted and 3D-printed to create the stools, layer by layer.

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

Setaki explained that marine ropes are challenging to recycle because they contain a cocktail of materials that accumulate various residues over time.

Careful selection is essential to determine the ropes with the highest polypropylene content to be transformed into recycled plastic pellets, she explained.

The ropes were transformed into plastic pellets

While no virgin plastic is used in the creation of the stools, a small percentage of additives support the furniture’s long-term outdoor use, including UV protection.

“These additives are compatible with recycling the material again,” said Setaki.

Each seat features a subtly different hue, which is determined by the colour of the original rope rather than additional pigments or coatings.

The stools were also designed with spinning top-style pointed bases, so that they rock when the user sits down.

This gentle rocking motion was chosen to mimic real buoys bobbing along 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.”

Each unique stool was engraved with its batch and production number, and then placed by Rotterdam harbour.

The project was created as an example of how designers can seek out local, surplus resources in an effort to contextualise their practice with the place that 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.”

Founded in 2016, The New Raw is run by Setaki and Panos Sakkas. The studio 3D prints locally sourced plastic waste to create furniture.

Buoy is nominated alongside a vibrant shortlist of sustainable design projects, including a cement-free architectural material made of waste date pits and lighting for an Australia bookshop made of its own faulty publications rejected due to printing errors.