🪸Living Seawalls: 3D printed marine construction in Miami
How a Miami climate tech startup is 3D printing living seawalls to help combat the climate crisis.
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WATCH: How to 3D print living seawalls
One Miami construction and climate tech startup is the first to print 3D living seawalls in the U.S., which can serve as artificial reefs to help mitigate the impacts of climate change. Watch our On Site with Kind Designs here.
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In the middle of a warehouse district in southwest Miami-Dade County, a robot is 3D printing seawalls that can serve as artificial reefs and as a barrier to rising sea levels.
The construction and climate tech startup behind the living seawalls, Kind Designs, is also the first in the country to use 3D printing to do so.
The Miami-based company was founded by Anya Freeman, a lawyer turned climate tech startup founder hoping to turn her idea into a unicorn company, all while helping to save communities from the impacts of the climate crisis.
“The narrative seemed to be our city is sinking. And that didn't make sense to me,” Freeman told us as she gave Opportunity Miami the first tour of the warehouse and printing process. “And that's how I started researching the space. I came across sea walls, and we found a way to reimagine those sea walls and make them more affordable for communities and also better for the environment.”
Come along with Opportunity Miami in our latest On Site video featuring Kind Designs. Watch here.
Florida alone has more than 9,000 miles of seawalls, the highest in the country. Repairing – and raising – them could cost up to $75 billion by 2040. Meanwhile, there is expected to be a similarly outsized need in coastal cities around the world.
Scientists and private companies are now coming up with innovative ways to build stronger and more environmentally friendly solutions, such as living seawalls.
Traditional marine infrastructure leaches chemicals into the water and doesn’t interact with a biodiverse underwater environment. But Kind Designs uses 3D technology from the Dutch company CyBe Construction to print its so-called living seawalls that function similarly to coral reefs and mangroves by mimicking the natural environment and being able to host biodiversity, such as oysters, sponges, algae, invertebrates, and a multitude of fish species. The seawalls are made with recycled materials and are embedded with sensors to collect water quality data.
A FLORIDA TEAM TO SOLVE A FLORIDA PROBLEM
Anya Freeman said they are hyper-focused on selling in Florida right now and have almost sold out for the whole year with over a thousand panels – usually about ten by ten feet – in preorders. For context, the company plans to print about 1,200 with its single CyBe printer. Production has begun, and the first installations will be in private properties in Miami in August.
“For us to start here is really important because we're solving a true Florida problem,” she said. “And we have a Florida team and a warehouse in Miami, and that means a lot to us.”
FUNDING CONTINUES
Kind Designs won the 2023 Florida Aerospace and Emerging Tech Forum competition of $40,000, with another venture capital firm agreeing to invest another $100,000. Freeman said she expects to close their $5 million seed round within the next few weeks, with most of its investors being Florida-based, including Govo Venture Partners and Florida Opportunity Fund. Other investors include M4 Family Office and Ankh Impact Ventures.
Next, Freeman plans to purchase additional CyBe printing robots and expand the warehouse and operations team to scale up production.
“For us, the goal is to mass produce these panels and democratize the product,” she said. Ensuring that the printed seawalls are more affordable to make and purchase, she said, can give some of the most vulnerable communities to rising sea levels a solution to the problem instead of having to abandon those communities.
“That's a huge part of what we're working on here,” she said. With 3D technology, Kind Designs can print seawalls “exponentially faster” and cheaper, bringing down the cost of seawalls and with the environmental benefits as a bonus.
GREEN ECONOMICS
Kind Designs is a business-to-business startup that produces 3D-printed seawalls and then sells them to coastal construction companies, which handle all the permitting and installation.
CyBe’s printer and mortar – an eco-friendly building material specific for 3D printing applications – makes it faster and cheaper than traditional seawall construction. Usually, a company would need to use molds to create panels for the seawalls, which is a slow and labor-intensive process that’s also more expensive and takes up tons of space.
For instance, a regular seawall project could require about a dozen molds that must be laid out to dry for two weeks before they cure and can be installed. Instead, Kind Designs can deliver its printed seawalls to the construction site the next day, ready for installation, for roughly the same price.
So the construction companies can save time and space, and “all the environmental benefits are free,” Freeman said. “And that's really essential, that we have awesome economics because there's no green premium: the sea wall functions as a reef, sequesters carbon, collects data, and doesn't cost any additional money to our customer. So that's the key.”
By 2025, Freeman anticipates being able to shift focus from beyond Florida onto a global platform and provide the technology to construction companies and coastal communities around the world.
THE AMERICAN DREAM
Originally from Ukraine, Freeman and her family emigrated to the United States when she was a teenager. “I didn't speak any English. I did not know the cool thing to wear on the first day of school. But I felt excited about becoming American,” she said.
Freeman studied law at the University of Miami, served as general counsel for Florida State Trust, and worked at the U.S. Attorney’s Office before opening up her own law firm. By 2020, she founded Living Seawalls.
“For me, it means a lot to have an impact company because that's like the ultimate American dream,” she said. “To do anything less will be a big waste of the opportunity I have of being in this country.”
PITCH US
If you have a company or entrepreneur to suggest or an idea to share that relates to building Miami’s future, email us at next@opportunity.miami. We invite you to subscribe to our YouTube channel to watch our Interviews and On Site video series featuring leaders shaping Miami's future. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can subscribe by clicking here. And if you are new to Opportunity Miami, you can learn about our mission and work here.
– Suzette