Living up to its core value of crafting aesthetically pleasing designs out of waste material, The New Raw has kicked it up a notch once again with its Ermis chair. Made out of waste material of their in-house production facilities in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, the project bagged the public vote winner for seating design of Dezeen Awards 2021. Know more about it on FURNITURE DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY (FDT).
Led by designers Panos Sakkas and Foteini Setaki, The New Raw does a lot of research by design which generates waste. Everything new emerges from a process of trial and error. Failures and evaluations help the studio to achieve its task at hand. During the process, a considerable quantity of material that needs to be handled appropriately is left behind. That is when the duo found a way to reuse this material and cut back on the volume of waste generated by the studio’s R&D through the limited Ermis series.
Made with batches of different coloured production waste, which provide a unique identity to each piece of furniture through unexpected colour transitions and gradients, The New Raw breathes a new life into its own waste and at the same time creates one-of-a-kind object of high quality and durability.
The monolithic seat of the Ermis chair follows simple and ergonomic lines and is robotically crafted with a single spiral plastic thread, thereby creating a graphic texture on its surface. The layer orientation – similar to that of wood or marble veins – constantly follows the geometry of the chair via a slight rotation. Despite minimal material usage, the chair is strong.
During the 3D printing process, the recycled plastic alters into a different material with distinctive properties. It is the orientation and proportions of these 3D printed lines that define the behaviour of the material and provide its distinctive ornaments. These lines are the bits and atoms of the Ermis chair.
The duo informs us, “Making a product from recycled and/or recyclable material is not the be-all and end-all of sustainable design. The adhesives and resins (glues) and the additional finishing and coatings (for colouring or glossiness) commonly used in traditional furniture manufacturing, make the harvesting of recyclable materials challenging at the end of their life.” To address this, The Netherland-based studio works in a mono-material approach; which means, at the end of their use, the products can be crushed and directly used as raw material for another product or project. This makes Ermis chair 100 per cent recyclable and is made with plastic waste that has been recycled for the second time.
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