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Inside tentatively workshop in Gazarebuilt after being destroyed by Airstrikes in IsraelSuleiman Abu Hassanin stands among piles of broken concrete, trying to give them a new look. His voice on the phone sounds tired, carrying the weight of what he is trying to do: rebuilding in a place where building materials are not available.
The infrastructure crisis in Gaza did not start with recent war. For years, Israel has blocked denied entry of cement, steel, and other construction materials, delaying the rebuilding process throughout the region. But after almost two years of more bombings, the scale of the destruction has pushed the system further into collapse.
According to UN estimates, Gaza is now more than 60 million tons of garbage, while hundreds of thousands of refugees continue to live in tents with little protection from the heat or winter cold and there is no hope in sight to rebuild.
In those places, trash is no longer trash. It is becoming one of the only buildings left.
One local response is Green Rock, a project led by Abu Hassanin that seeks to repurpose the remains of destroyed buildings into usable bricks like Lego. Similar methods of brick construction have been used elsewhere, including in other European and post-conflict areas such as. Sudan and Iraq. But in Gaza, the project emerges under very different conditions: not as an architectural experiment, but as a response to the near loss of modern reconstruction materials.
Abu Hassanin says the idea was born out of necessity rather than creativity. “We were faced with a simple equation: destruction without solutions,” he says. “So we tried to turn it into a resource.”
The work involves crushing and sorting the waste, then mixing it with local soil and other building materials produced inside Gaza before pressing it into blocks using hand-made machines. Thanks to the construction bricks can be assembled without traditional mortar, reducing the dependence on cement, which is still limited.
Usually, these types of bricks require cement, about 7 to 12 percent. But because access was so limited, the team said it developed its own version using locally available substitutes. Engineer Wajdi Jouda helped specify the size of the bricks and their construction to meet engineering standards and connected the team with technical expertise from outside Gaza.
