RISING SEA LEVELS ARE THREATENING OUR CITIES

BY ANYA FREEMAN

Kind Designs is using 3D printing technology to print living seawalls that mimic coral reefs and mangroves, hosting biodiversity and improving the quality of water.

Before I dive into what we are doing with Kind Designs, I would like to rewind and give you context about how we arrived at this idea. I’m originally from Ukraine, I grew up in Israel, and I got the opportunity to come to America in high school. I’ve always had this fire of not wanting to squander the opportunity of being in this country. I’m passionate about making the most of it— and making my parents proud because they took this journey for my brother and me, not for themselves.

After graduating high school, I came to Miami because I got a scholarship at UM Law School. As a lawyer, I was a prosecutor doing human trafficking work. But I started to think about what I wanted to do next. I knew that what I did had to have a huge scale, and I had to have a huge impact.

Living in Miami, a very obvious problem for our city is rising sea levels. This is discussed very frequently theoretically, but if you live here, it’s part of your day-to-day experience. The way I experienced it when I moved here 10 years ago and the way I experienced it today are drastically different. There is way more flooding. There are way more storm surges. So I looked into how we protect our coastal communities from rising sea levels.

Conventional Seawalls Are Failing

I looked at conventional seawalls and realized there has never been innovation. The very first seawall that was installed 100 years ago is the exact seawall that’s going into the water today. Never has anything been innovated, and no technology has ever been applied. I got excited about the opportunity. And even though, at the time, I had no construction or technology experience, I had such a passion for coming up with a solution that I put together a team that had the missing pieces.

The way that conventional seawalls look now is just flat, concrete seawalls. The problem with these seawalls is they’re very slow to produce and they are expensive. Contractors spend $25 a square foot to make their own panels using molds. And once you put in a flat seawall like this, all the biodiversity that lived in this habitat can’t attach. Toxins are coming out of the concrete. Sea life leaves the area, and water quality is dramatically reduced. The problem is the speed, the cost, and the environmental impact.

We’re Printing Next-Gen Seawalls

What we are doing in some ways is identical to conventional seawalls. And in some ways, it’s radically different. In the way that it’s identical: Firstly, it’s structural. Our seawalls have the same PSI and strength as conventional seawalls to meet building codes. Secondly, it’s the same installation methods. Contractors who buy our panels can substitute them and all of their projects in the pipeline with the same installation. And thirdly, to meet building codes, we are using concrete with the exception that we have an additive that prevents leaching. The seawalls do not leach any chemicals into the ocean, and, therefore, things can attach and grow.

The way that our wall is radically different is the design. We use 3D printers. We have autonomous printers that work 24/7 in a warehouse, spitting these panels out in 45 minutes per panel. It used to take 24 hours to make a panel with a mold. It’s dramatically faster. And we also have freedom of design. The robots don’t care if the panel’s flat or if it has a design. We’re using biomimicry to create these beautiful panels that mimic artificial reefs and mangrove roots. Therefore, biodiversity can latch onto the wall, hide from predators in the cave, and these walls become self-mitigating.

We did a project in Europe, an artificial reef using our printers and our materials, to show that sea life attaches to these materials and it hosts biodiversity. Consequently, when organisms attach, they deposit their skeletons into the wall, becoming like bio-cement, and the skeletons sequester carbon.

It’s an incredible empowerment of nature to do its thing. We have built-in sensors in the seawall. And the key is all those environmental benefits are at no added cost. We are selling these panels to contractors at $25 per square foot, the same price it costs them to make their own. It’s just a no-brainer to use these panels, which are delivered. They save all that construction time and have all the environmental benefits.

Our robots arrived in Miami in January 2023. We’ve been doing all our lab testing so far in Europe with our partners in the

Kind Designs uses autonomous 3D printers to create environmentally friendly seawalls using biomimicry to create beautiful panels that mimic artificial reefs and mangrove roots

© KIND DESIGNS

© KIND DESIGNS

Netherlands. We are fundraising now to open the warehouse in Miami. We already have $2.5 million in orders. We just need the funds to start executing these orders. We’ll have revenue from day one. We’re doing the monthlong training with our team and just starting to mass-produce the panels and expand.

Because rising sea levels are not a Miami problem. Globally, there are 507 cities at risk. And we’re excited to be able to offer our technology to those cities, empower local contractors and give them a solution that is not only economical for their community but also fantastic for the environment.

Anya is later opened her own law firm focused on environmental policy. Inspired by the opportunity to innovate around rising sea levels, which threaten Florida, Freeman took on the task of finding the team and the technological solution to this global challenge that both protects coastal communities and supports the environment.