I find Team Zoo’s projects inspirational for their unique and thoughtful use of one of the most overlooked building materials of our time: concrete block.  It is cheap, and readily available in most parts of the world. Its affordability puts it off to many designers (and especially students), but it should not be written off so easily.

When I volunteered in Panama this summer, I was a little surprised (at first) at how popular concrete block was in that region.  I had expected to see more prevalence of vernacular structures…and concrete block is such a universally available building material these days that it made me feel as if the Panamanians had lost their connection to the land through using this material.  But after staying there for a week, and seeing the issues that they had to cope with in terms of rain and insects, I grew to understand the tendency to prefer concrete block.  But the traditional and the improvised wooden structures that I saw down there were far more  interesting to me than the concrete block structures.  Even though the block had started to be utilized in ways that were effective to their climate.  The homogeneity of the concrete block resulted in less innovation.  It had more restrictions of assembly in comparison to building with natural materials, and the rawness of character that is present in building with sticks and leaves was largely absent in the concrete buildings.