Last year this time, Desi and I used funding that I won from the @columbia GSAPP Incubator Prize for social entrepreneurship to begin building bricks from seaweed in Puerto Rico.
Culebra - a small Puerto Rican island paradise - faces an ecological problem due to the large amounts of seaweed washing onto its white sand beaches. During graduate architecture school at Columbia, I researched how this issue of Sargassum seaweed could be transformed into something beneficial for coastal Caribbean communities, a project I called Sargatopía. One solution, which would at the same time address material supply shortages in Puerto Rico, is a locally sourced, carbon-negative construction product.
In May 2025, we went to Culebra for 2 weeks of on-site material prototyping and community fabrication workshops where we made the first of what is hopefully many Culebran Sargazo bricks.
Thanks to @columbiagsapp for allowing us to do this and @mujeresdeislaspr for hosting us.
#sargatopia #sargassum #culebra #puertorico #sustainablematerials
It’s hard to believe that our friend Conrad has been repping KCFF26 in Springer Market Square for just over a week! Going into the weekend, we thought we would share some behind-the-scenes of Conrad’s setup! 🦝✨
Thanks to our Broom-mates @rawdesignto and thanks as well to @winter.stations@downtownkingston ❄️
A special thank you to Conrad’s designers: Novak Djogo @novakdjogo and Daniel Vanderhorst @vanderhorstdan | Conrad is fabricated by: @anex_works
Song by Kingston’s own Good Fortune @goodfortunemusic
It’s a big day for us today… CONRAD HAS ARRIVED TO KINGSTON!!! 🦝🦝🦝 Many more posts and stories to come about our 2026 mascot 🍿🎬🎞️
Special thanks to: our Broom-mates @rawdesignto and also thanks to @winter.stations@downtownkingston@city.of.kingston
Conrad is designed by Novak Djogo @novakdjogo and Daniel Vanderhorst @vanderhorstdan and fabricated by @anex_works ✨
Visit kingcanfilmfest.com to learn more about Conrad!
