Sargablocks Mexico:

Turning Crisis into Construction

  • Brick Construction

  • Seaweed Block Interiors

  • Family Support

  • Seaweed Architecture

  • New Life off the Streets

  • Sustainable Construction

  • Brick Materials

  • Seaweed Brick Interiors

  • Builder Mentorship

While I was traveling with my partner across Mexico, we spent for several weeks driving along the Yucatan peninsula and camping in our van on the beaches. During our morning walks on the sand, we noticed a horrible smell and began to see piles of brown seaweed spanning miles of shoreline. I found out that this phenomenon has lately been a growing environmental problem in the Caribbean waters. Tons of smelly, brown micro algae called sargassum washes up on these shores each day, choking both the coastal ecosystem as well as the tourism-based economy. As climate change continues to alter the balance of ocean life, this situation could quickly turn catastrophic. However, there are some people working to restore a symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.

One local company, BlueGreen Mexico, saw opportunity amidst the crisis to transform this excess beach sludge into construction-grade building material by mixing it with other natural materials and forming it into bricks. They call it Sargablock. BlueGreen’s founder, Omar Vazquez, didn’t only aim to address the repurposing of seaweed, but he also saw that young people in his hometown were struggling to find work opportunities and thus getting sucked into the vortex of street crime. Identifying the potential of these men to be able to rebuild their lives, Vazquez decided to employ them to fabricate and build with these seaweed bricks so they would not face the desperation of life on the streets.

As an architect with a passion for sustainable systems, I am fascinated and enamored by efforts like these. Companies such as BlueGreen Mexico are finding clever, productive alternatives to rebalance our world, both environmentally and socioeconomically, by giving both materials and people a new sense of purpose.

Typhoon Relief Philippines:

Rebuilding Refuge

  • Family Meeting

  • Strength Through the Storm

  • Back to School After Yolanda

  • Aftermath of the Typhoon

  • Family Tuktuk

  • Love for Tacloban

  • Beachfront House After Typhoon

  • Basketball Hoop After the Storm

  • Life Keeps Going

  • Typhoon Shelter for Thousands

  • Community Remains After the Storm

In 2013, the most powerful typhoon in history ripped its way across the middle of the Philippines. The most heavily affected city called Tacloban bore the brunt of devastation because its infrastructure was not equipped to handle such a force of nature. Many buildings were flattened and roads flooded, leaving over 6,000 people dead in the region as a result. In my final year of architecture school, I joined forces with a local nonprofit to do something about it.

In the midst of the city’s reconstruction after the disaster, I traveled to Tacloban to assess a building that could be renovated into a refuge in the event of future storms. This was my first time walking through the aftermath of a deadly natural disaster and witnessing its effects in person. I experienced a paradoxical mix of heartbreak and awe as I heard the harrowing stories of local survivors. “The flood came all the way up to the second floor of this house” recalled my friend and local resident Fortune Remigio. What a life-changing experience, enduring the raging wind and rushing waters of a typhoon. I was inspired to help in any way I could, so in partnership with local humanitarians, I co-designed a space that would accommodate church gatherings, living quarters, and emergency shelter when the next typhoon came.

Within a year of completing the design, the local community came together to construct a new gathering space and refuge that was comfortable, healthy, and structurally sound. I had to go back home to the US to finish my studies, but a few years later I returned to the site of the building that I had designed. It was still there and strong as ever. I came to find that it had stood the test of multiple typhoons since the one in 2013 and kept people safe in times of crisis. Returning to the Philippines after ongoing disasters awakened my fixation on the concept of resilience and the built environment. When communities come together to find local solutions to challenging situations, the genius of sustainable architecture knows no bounds.

Waponi Amazon Ecuador:

Ancient Meets Modern

  • Watching Movies in the Village

  • Matriarch

  • No School Ever

  • Waorani Dance

  • Modern Makeup Mirror

  • A Welcome Home

  • Show and Tell

  • Traditional Waorani House

  • Indigenous Visionary Moi

  • Traditional Structures of the Jungle

  • Curiosity

  • Traditional Face Paint

  • Pets of the Amazon

  • Movie Night in the Village

In the midst of a career transition from architecture to photojournalism, I sent myself on a quest to the wildest and most remote places in South America to seek out stories worth sharing. This led me to Moi Guiquita and his Waponi Amazon Project, an initiative to advocate for the livelihood of indigenous Waorani people - his family and heritage - deep in the jungles of Ecuador. I volunteered to help out with his nonprofit in his home village and was quickly swept into a local documentary project where we would venture into the depths of rural life and film a day with the Waorani. And to add even more weight to our expedition, we would be showing that film with a projector in the village so the community could watch themselves on screen for the first time.

The Waorani are the most recently contacted tribe in the Ecuadorian Amazon and are known for their strained relations with outsiders. They were first reached by missionaries in the 1950’s and since have then have been subject to exploitation and land-grabbing by international oil mining companies. Living intertwined with the natural world, the Waorani have developed a lifestyle that reflects the beauty and volatility of their rainforest home. Their delicate woven textiles and distinctive body paint are crafted directly from local flora, and every cultural symbol relates to the dynamic flow of the Amazonian rivers. Daily routines are rigorous and time-consuming, and life is not easy. But the Waorani insist that life is good.

Moi and I were able to film the actions, spaces, and sounds of the village that were later shared with the people themselves on a projector screen in the middle of the jungle. I will never forget the smiles that broke out on their faces when his family members recognized themselves in a real life movie. It was their language, their home, and their world, displayed in a positive and dignifying light. The power of film is greater than we think. Visual storytelling can give a sense of pride and bond humans together in ways otherwise hard to achieve. It can also do the opposite. What Moi and his initiative are achieving is building human connection.