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Writer's pictureNathalie Mezza-Garcia

Vegan Architecture and Putting Local Communities First

Updated: Nov 1, 2022

Seaphia CEO.


It’s been 2 years since I co-founded Seaphia, and after its second year, I think it’s time for revisiting our principles, especially since we are growing, and we are doing well.


When I decided to found Seaphia, I knew there were at least 4 core things to it:


  1. Seaphia would do consulting and business development for floating projects.

  2. Seaphia would do consulting and business development for Special Economic Zones.

  3. Seapha’s approach to architecture is based on sustainability.

  4. Seaphia’s action plan to create new zones emphasizes the importance of in-person community engagement– even if projects are Zones that are digitally focused (especially in those cases).

Putting community engagement first, involving and prioritizing the interests of the local community in new Zones has been core to our practice. It’s also led to great outcomes. One example is our project with our partners, the Catawba Digital Economic Zone. As a result of a strong grassroots movement (which even involved me moving to South Carolina, US), the local community voted the project into law. So I am certain that Seaphia having community engagement as one of its principles works, I’m a firm believer and I have proof.


Seaphia’s Floating City - Colombia

I’ve been rethinking Seaphia’s approach to sustainability recently. Often, when people think about it, they do it in terms of the planet: no plastic for the planet; renewable materials, for the planet. That is fine, and I agree 100% with the reasons behind this reasoning. However, I’ve decided that Seaphia’s sustainable strategy is one that puts other species first. Above everything. If other species will be negatively affected by a project even at a low rate as 5%, the project should not happen.


I understand that the relation between planet and species is symbiotic and is, beyond a two-way street, a network. But in its aquatecture projects Seaphia will focus on the local aspect of thinking community (other species’ communities specifically), notably since placing the local community at the center of developments has yielded such good outputs in our new Zone projects. I’m calling this approach Vegan Architecture.


Vegan Aquatecture - Seaphia

Vegan Aquatecture is for us, architecture that prioritizes the well-being of groups from other species in the area first.


Aerial View

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