Low-cost, climate-resilient infrastructure for a rising sea.
SeaBrick Society's mission is to build floating, water-resistant infrastructure that coastal communities facing rising sea levels can build and own themselves.
The water is coming, and concrete is the wrong answer
One third of the world's people live in coastal communities. Rising sea levels will destroy the homes of hundreds of millions of them over the next thirty years. Heat, fire and storms will displace billions more. We need low-cost ways of producing resilient infrastructure that does not rely on concrete.
There are no renewable products in the marine infrastructure market. Everything is concrete, steel or petroleum. Cement production alone accounts for 9% of global CO2 emissions. The way we build in the sea is part of the problem it is meant to solve.
Build into the ocean instead of retreating from it
A floating structure rises with the water. It does not need deep foundations, a dry dock or heavy equipment. SeaBrick lets cities and coastal communities build out into the water, replacing land rather than losing it. Docks, platforms and breakwaters come first. Floating homes and whole communities come after. Bricks are just the means to that end.
Carbon negative, by design
Organic fibre is cellulose, and cellulose is about 40% carbon. Each SeaBrick stores more than its own weight in CO2, locked into a mineral matrix for the life of the structure. The opposite of floating concrete and steel.
A hard line on sustainability
The question we keep asking is how inexpensive and how scalable we can get while holding a hard line on sustainability. No petrochemicals as an input. No coatings that can shed microparticles into the sea. Materials that mineralize and strengthen over time instead of corroding. That line has cost us time. We keep it.
Community ownership, community control
The long-term vision is a decentralized, cooperative manufacturing ecosystem. Low-tech production plants that ship in a container to wherever they are needed, so that communities affected by climate change can build their own floating infrastructure from materials at hand. The tools for adaptation belong in the hands of the people most affected. Long-term ownership held by the communities themselves, and in Canada by Indigenous communities in particular.
What the Society does
Research
Materials, connections and marine durability, with university partners and independent engineers. We publish what we learn, including what did not work.
The standard
What a SeaBrick is: its dimensions, its connections and its tests. The Society holds the form so that anyone can build with it.
Pilots
Small real structures with coastal partners: work floats, aquaculture platforms, docks. Working infrastructure first.
Community
Open days, model bricks, students and advisors. A building system people can hold in their hands is one they can understand.
Where to from here? The technology shows how the bricks fit together. Get in touch if you want to build with them.