Gaza Is Rebuilding With Lego-Like Bricks Made From Rubble

Inside a makeshift workshop in Gaza, rebuilt after it was damaged by Israeli air strikes, Suleiman Abu Hassanin stands among piles of broken concrete, trying to give them a new form. His voice over the phone sounds tired, carrying the weight of what he is trying to do: rebuild in a place where building materials are no longer available.

Gaza’s construction crisis did not begin with the latest war. For years, the Israeli blockade restricted the entry of cement, steel, and other building materials, slowing reconstruction efforts across the enclave. But after nearly two years of intensified bombardment, the scale of destruction has pushed the system far beyond collapse.

According to UN estimates, Gaza now contains more than 60 million tons of rubble, while hundreds of thousands of displaced people continue to live in tents with little protection from heat or winter chill and no clear prospect for reconstruction.

In that environment, rubble is no longer just debris. It is becoming one of the only construction resources left.

One local response is Green Rock, a project led by Abu Hassanin that aims to recycle the remains of destroyed buildings into usable Lego-like bricks. Similar interlocking brick systems have been used elsewhere, including in parts of Europe and in post-conflict settings 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 disappearance of conventional reconstruction materials.

Abu Hassanin says the idea was born out of necessity rather than innovation. “We were facing a simple equation: destruction without solutions,” he says. “So we tried to turn it into a resource.”

The process involves crushing and sorting rubble, then mixing it with local soil and alternative binding materials developed inside Gaza before compressing it into blocks using a machine built by hand. The resulting interlocking bricks can be assembled without traditional mortar, reducing reliance on cement, which remains scarce.

Lego-like interlocking bricks made from recycled rubble inside the Green Rock workshop in Gaza.

Photograph: Hassan Herzallah

Under normal conditions, this type of brick would require some cement, around 7 to 12 percent. But because access to it remains heavily restricted, the team says it developed a version using locally available replacement materials instead. Engineer Wajdi Jouda helped define the brick’s size and structure to meet engineering standards and connected the team with technical expertise from outside Gaza.