[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":9},["ShallowReactive",2],{"person-bio-grant-romundt":3},{"bio":4},[5,6,7,8],"Grant Romundt is CEO of Ocean Builders, a company developing innovative, eco-friendly floating homes and structures (“SeaPods”) designed for sustainable living on the water. He has spent years living aboard the first oceanic floating homes as the company works toward deploying them globally.","He founded Ocean Builders with Chad Elwartowski and the engineer Rüdiger Koch, and the company moved its work to Panama after an earlier attempt off Thailand ended with the seastead dismantled by the navy. The SeaPod is raised above the water on a single column so that it shades and disturbs less of the reef beneath it, and the company presents the design as restorative rather than merely low-impact.","Romundt has lived aboard the prototypes himself, which is the point of them: the case for floating homes is not made by renderings but by people staying in one through weather, maintenance and the ordinary boredom of daily life. The first pod has since been moved to its permanent Caribbean position and is occupied as a private residence rather than a demonstration.","He spends much of his time in discussions with governments, developers and island states about floating development, where the argument for building on water is practical rather than ideological: some places have far more coastline than buildable land.",1788062489230]