National Geographic

“We are not necessarily dead set against sea otter her back to health again, and this time 820 was reintroduction,” says Oregon Dungeness Crab formally pronounced unsuited to life in the Commission executive director Tim Novotny, wild. She lives these days in a rock-landscaped who has joined ongoing talks with the Elakha outdoor pool at SeaWorld San Diego, where she Alliance, a group of conservationists, scientists, and her poolmates—all rescue sea otters, like coastal experts, and tribal leaders exploring 820—“hit it off,” says Shirley Hill, an animal another attempt at returning sea otters to the care specialist who’s worked for decades with state. “The concern is, you don’t want to put a floating time bomb of furry crab- eaters in the water. Goats are cute, but nobody wants 5,000 of them in their backyard.” THE 21ST-CENTURY Elakha is a Chinook word SEA OTTER CONUNDRUM: for “sea otter,” and the alli- THEIR APPETITES. ance’s president, a former Oregon coastal planner named Robert Bailey, says he and his colleagues are working hard to learn from A 60-POUND ADULT the Alaska experience—to regard sea otters as “every- EATS ABOUT 15 POUNDS OF body’s treasures,” as he puts SHELLFISH MEAT A DAY. it, while trying to craft rein- troduction proposals that might keep human shellfish harvesters from losing too much of their catch. In any case, the sea otters would have to be placed strategi- cally, Bailey says, and their population monitored closely. “We want to sea otters. “She’s just got a great disposition.” minimize that impact,” he adds. Her name, also, is no longer digits. A pub- Where might these sea otter transplants come lic poll renamed her Nova, and Hill says that from? Among other sources, the populations despite the way Nova sometimes tries to cadge that include surrogate-raised otters like 820. A extra food from the others’ meals, she appears carefully monitored reintroduction site could to have won over even the pool’s oldest sea otter, become another release spot for the Monte- who tends toward aloofness. The last time I saw rey Bay Aquarium’s rescue sea otters, and two her, Nova was cruising around juggling a plastic other West Coast aquariums are developing tube stuffed with bits of abalone and octopus Monterey-style programs to pair surrogate sea frozen in ice. The attendants toss these into otter mothers with rescue pups. Those programs the pool so the otters can bash them around to will need appropriate release spots too. loosen the meat and then dig it out, and Nova And here it would be nice to be able to report had evidently decided to toy with hers first, bal- that 820 was last observed swimming serenely ancing it on her stomach, pushing it with her in Monterey Bay, smashing crabs on her nose, banging it against the glass. People in the stomach and so forth. Alas, that’s not what hap- gathered crowd pointed and smiled, and a man pened. In the tradition of her species, 820’s story lifted the small girl beside him so she could get turned into a just barely survival saga: A few a better view. “So cute,” he said. j weeks after that second release, she slid onto Cynthia Gorney is a longtime contributing writer. a nearby dock, wounded and emaciated. She’d Ralph Pace specializes in underwater and environ- been bitten by a shark. She had parasites. Res- mental photography. Kiliii Yüyan documents how cuers scooped her up again, the vet staff nursed cultures around the globe relate to nature. W H A T ’ S N O T T O L O V E ? 107



BY PETER S C H WA R T Z S T E I N PHOTOGRAPHS BY MOISES SAMAN MADE FROM MUD West African architects look to the past to beat future heat. The mud-brick walls of the 19th-century Grand Mosque of Bobo- Dioulasso in Burkina Faso are waterproofed every year with shea butter. But mud often can’t hold up to the intense rains climate change brings. 109



At the Burkina Institute of Technology in Kou- dougou, designed by celebrated Burkinabe architect Francis Kéré and completed in 2020, poured clay forms the massive walls. A facade of eucalyptus wood creates shade. Above each classroom, a vent allows hot air to escape.

The Yemeni city of Shibam was designed with the scorching desert heat in mind. Nicknamed Manhat- tan of the Desert, its towering earthen buildings of vari- ous heights provide shadow. The white walls reflect direct sun- light and prevent heat from accumulating.



ON A MID-MAY MORNING The walls of the Grand IN THE VILLAGE OF Mosque of Bobo- KOUMI, BURKINA FASO, Dioulasso are more SANON MOUSA HAS than six feet thick, pro- NEARLY FINISHED ANNUAL tecting worshippers MAINTENANCE ON HIS from the heat. Such THREE-ROOM HOUSE. thick mud brick slowly absorbs the heat of the He replaced termite-ridden roof supports with day and then releases freshly cut beams and reinforced the heat- it as the night cools. defying mud walls, some of which are a yard thick and more than a hundred years old. After This story was pro- replenishing the roof thatch and sacrificing a goat duced and published to the memory of his ancestors, all that remains by National Geographic is applying layers of rainproofing to the exterior. through a reporting part- nership with the United “The mud will keep us cool. The motor oil, clay, Nations Development and cow dung will keep us dry,” Mousa says as we Programme. tour his living space, which is a good 25 degrees cooler than outside. “We’ve perfected this.” Mousa, a 50-something retired school librarian with a somber demeanor, is proud of his house. That doesn’t mean living in it is his first choice, though. In recent years he’s watched his wealth- ier neighbors in this verdant strip of the country’s southwest rebuild their homes in concrete. He has smarted at what he sees as a symbol of his relative poverty. Despite his considerable debt and consecutive failed harvests of the crops he relies on to pad his pension, status and safety are tempting him to borrow money and abandon his mud home. When we met, two brothers in the village had recently been killed in their sleep when a mud wall collapsed on them. Inside a crumbling mud meetinghouse, Mousa 114 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C



HEAT AND HERITAGE BURKINA Shea FASO tree Naturally cooled and intricately decorated mud homes have defined architecture in Burkina Faso for centuries. Many Langouérou people have now switched to fully concrete homes, but mud is still in use—and increasingly recognized as a traditional AFRICA solution to the modern problem of rising temperatures. Family AREA ENLARGED Villages such as Lan- compounds gouérou, and the in the village model area re-created here, are a mix of older and newer styles. Langouérou Fowl enclosure Women’s realm Married couples customarily sleep separately. Twin circle houses for women have low doorways to block heat—and intruders. Kitchen Crocodile Skylight Average step Layers of equals 3 ft mud balls, packed together Mud Grain Ladder balls pot Bench 6-8“ Fowl Courtyard 1.1 ft enclosure Mud Open bricks doorway 2.6 ft tall Mold Fire pit 1 PLANNING THE HOUSE 2 BUILDING BLOCKS Lizard Rooms are typically three to four Locally mined, clay-rich earth is steps wide; floor plans are etched mixed with water, then molded on the ground. Height is measured into bricks or balls. Grass, cow in brick layers or mud balls. Con- dung, and other materials can be struction is a community effort. added to strengthen the mixture. MONICA SERRANO, NGM STAFF; ALEXANDER STEGMAIER

3 MULTIUSE ROOF Traditional roof Modern roof Wood beams support an earthen Earthen slab Corrugated slab that insulates the structure. iron A finished roof is also used for Wood beam drying food, for storage, and for Mud brick Wood beam outdoor sleeping on warm nights. laid lengthwise Mud brick laid widthwise Men’s quarters NEWER TOUCHES In the 1970s, villagers began incorporating modern materials into mud homes, and mar- ried couples began sleeping under the same roof. The newer homes are simpler to build and maintain but harder to keep cool. Modern add-ons Metal roofs are easy to install but offer little heat protection and are not multifunctional. Men’s quarters Standard- Lantern Thin size metal walls Rectangular homes door where men traditionally 5.7 ft tall sleep have large doors but thick, cooling walls. Thick walls Water Wooden Bath door 3.8 ft tall House entrance Pigments are mixed using a mortar and pestle Second layer: Iron-rich colored earth plaster enhanced coating First layer: earth plaster 4 WATERPROOFING 5 DECORATION SOURCES: HIROHIDE KOBAYASHI, KYOTO UNIVERSITY; LASSINA Walls are coated with resins and Wall designs are painted using SIMPORÉ, UNIVERSITY OF fats extracted from fruit or shea natural pigments, such as black OUAGADOUGOU; DIRECTORATE trees. This protects them from from graphite and red from iron- OF CULTURAL HERITAGE, water during rainy seasons but rich soils. Lizards are symbols of MINISTRY OF CULTURE OF must be reapplied annually. life; crocodiles are sacred. BURKINA FASO; THIERRY JOFFROY, UNIVERSITÉ GRENOBLE ALPES M A D E F R O M M U D 117

Workers cool off during their break at a residential building site on the outskirts of Marrakech. The Moroccan city has embraced concrete in its construction boom. sits to the side of the village chief. Sanu, who of concrete is increasing. As living standards goes by only one name, is furious. He has man- rise and access to concrete expands, some of the dated mud construction in the village center in world’s hottest, poorest landscapes are rapidly a bid to preserve the old ways, but fewer and morphing from brown to cinder block gray. fewer residents are following his instructions— including his own sons. “This is our heritage,” But abandoning traditional materials and the Sanu says. “For thousands of years these houses construction techniques that underpin their gave us a good life. Why would we change when uses is anything but a sign of progress. Or so says we most need them? a growing coterie of architects, community lead- ers, and government officials. Particularly not “I guess this is modernity,” he adds. “Maybe now, when climate change is making already hot we can’t fight it anymore.” regions even hotter, and concrete is fueling some of that warming. The manufacture of cement, a MUD VERSUS CONCRETE key ingredient of concrete, accounts for around 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. A C R O S S A F R I C A’S S A H E L R E G I O N, there are Proponents of traditional building techniques thousands of villages like Koumi—and in the are adamant that climate-battered communities dozens I’ve visited in several countries, the use need more, not fewer, homes, schools, and civic 118 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

buildings made in the traditional way. architecture, such as Timbuktu’s city center “The reality is that cement construction is in Mali and Burkina Faso’s Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso. simply sexy,” says Francis Kéré, a Burkina Faso– born architect and globally renowned advocate Countries with impressive but largely lost tra- of ecosensitive architecture. “But it’s bad sex. It ditions of mud construction, including Saudi is not producing comfort.” Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, also are try- ing to replicate the aesthetics and cooling features Mud walls, when built thick enough, can of traditional architecture, incorporating wind absorb and store a lot of heat, which then dis- tunnels, building orientation, and use of shade. sipates as outside temperatures cool in the They appear less interested in the construction evening. By contrast, thin concrete cinder materials that were once used. “Our forefathers blocks, with their hollow recesses, allow heat to built things with whatever they had, and maybe pass through freely, rapidly warming interiors. if they had had a certain type of modern com- posite panel 500 years ago, they’d have used it,” Architects like Kéré are motivated in part by says Chris Wan, head of design management in a desire to preserve heritage and identity. For Masdar, a pioneering sustainability-oriented city all mud’s recent association with poverty and in Abu Dhabi. “It’s about adapting traditional backwardness, bricks made from the material materials, traditional designs. We also build can produce spectacular, globally significant whatever’s best within our means.” But mud-brick revivalists have a grander ambi- tion as well, particularly in Africa. On a conti- nent that accounts for just 4 percent of global emissions yet is suffering much of the worst climate-related fallout, they’re trying to assume ownership of some of the solutions, even as world powers struggle to take meaningful action. In beating the heat, these architects suggest, home- grown, nature-based traditions could be every bit as important as foreign technology and expertise. “We have chosen artifice. We have chosen to detach ourselves from our origins,” says Salima Naji, an award-winning architect. Naji champions mud construction in Morocco, which has aggres- sively turned its back on the material in recent decades, even though the country boasts one of the richest collections of earth architecture in the world. “We have done this because we have for- gotten the extraordinary benefits of these build- ings in the heat. But we must remember, because we need it now more than ever,” Naji says. A REFUGE FOR THE SWEATY C R I S S C RO S S I N G B U R K I N A FA S O by car provides an illustration of mud’s many perks. It’s at least 113 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade by the time I arrive in the northern town of Kaya but well under 86 degrees inside architect Clara Sawadogo’s lat- est design. The vaulted earth ceiling and stone- mud walls of the half-finished clinic cocoon the cool. Angled toward the prevailing north winds and surrounded by lush, shady greenery, the site is already enticing enough for dozing stray dogs. M A D E F R O M M U D 119



At a quarry in Pissy, on the western edge of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, men, women, and children mine granite to be made into concrete and gravel. Because of high demand for con- crete, this quarry is still open despite com- petition from nearby mechanized ones.

Workers at a quarry in Houndé, Burkina Faso, hammer laterite stone bricks from the solid ground. Mud bricks must be shaped before dry- ing, but laterite can be extracted in rectan- gles. Both traditional building materials create cooler struc- tures than concrete, are cheaper, and require less energy to produce.



‘WE’VE LEARNED THAT IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT THE MATERIALS. IT’S NOT ABOUT CONCRETE BEING BAD. IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH THEM.’ FRANCIS KÉRÉ, ARCHITECT Sawadogo is young, environmentally savvy, concrete and mud houses, nor wood. That’s and part of a global movement to repopularize vital in a country losing up to 600,000 acres of mud. She’s got plenty of talking points. The woodland a year to deforestation, according to material is essentially free, or at least locally avail- forestry officials, some of it for roof supports. able for a fraction of the cost of concrete, which requires several ingredients that, in Burkina In the Royal Court of Tiébélé, a commune Faso’s case, are mostly imported. At the adobe along the Ghanaian border where most resi- pits that dot the outskirts of many of the larger dents have long since turned to concrete, some villages, teams of laborers lever mud from the appear to regret ever having abandoned their ground; compress it into rectangular, cookie mud homes. cutter-like fittings; then sell each air-dried brick for 40 West African francs, about 10 U.S. cents. “They see the comfort that they said no to before,” says Bayeridiena Abdou, a farmer “People tell me: It’s the 21st century. Stop using who lives inside the local chief ’s mud-only mud,” Sawadogo says, gesturing at the clinic. compound and has witnessed clandestine “But look at this. What’s not modern about this?” nocturnal returns to the exiles’ crumbling old houses. “They’re sneaking back.” Mud construction contributes little to global warming. And concrete tends to be a Doctors in four medical facilities I visited gateway, once people can afford it, to another report a roughly fivefold increase in heat-related fossil-fuel-guzzling invention: air-conditioning. Worldwide, both the electricity and the coolants required by air-conditioning are growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions. The greatest selling point of mud in Burkina Faso, where temperatures seldom dip much below 90 degrees, is that it makes the heat tol- erable, even without air-conditioning. Most of Africa is on track for more than two degrees Cel- sius (3.6°F) of warming by late this century, a fig- ure that masks even more dramatic temperature increases in parts of the continent. In Boromo, roughly a three-hour drive south- west of the capital, Ouagadougou, Ilboudou Abdallah has recently rebuilt his part-concrete, sheet-metal-roofed house entirely in mud. “I can’t tell you what a joy it is being able to spend time inside the house now without suffering,” he says. The Nubian Vault Association, an interna- tional NGO, helped construct the home, one of more than 600 private houses it built in Burkina Faso in 2020. The organization’s vaulted model requires nei- ther metal roofs, which magnify heat in both 124 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Maxim Kiemdrebeojo, 17, lives at this Kéré- designed orphanage in Koudougou built from laterite brick. Some children here have been displaced by armed conflict with Islamists in the north and east of Burkina Faso. Super- visors think that the coolness of the building helps reduce conflict among residents. admissions and deaths over the past decade. This is what it can look like when you spend the Some of them suspect that a disproportionate time to make a proper clay structure.” number of these patients rebuilt in concrete but lacked the means to artificially cool their Big names near and far seem convinced by his new houses. reasoning. In recent years Kéré has designed a new national assembly building in Benin that’s On a sizzling hot day in midsummer, the town nearly complete. A “symbol for the nation,” he of Léo is still—except for the local clinic. Ram- says, modeled on a palaver tree. Another one he bunctious children chase one another among its created for Burkina Faso has yet to get off the shaded courtyards. Their parents rest beneath the ground. In March 2022 he became the first Afri- surrounding trees. Even newly arrived patients, can architect to win the Pritzker Prize, the most among them a man who’s just been pried from prestigious award in architecture. a car wreck, marvel at the naturally cool wards. Francis Kéré, designer of these buildings, is DANGEROUS TO LIVE IN? pleased but unsurprised at the effect. MUD -BRICK BUILDINGS, for all their seem- “We’ve learned that it’s not just about the ingly magical cooling powers, have at least one materials. It’s not about concrete necessarily major drawback. being bad,” he says. “It’s what you do with them. M A D E F R O M M U D 125



Salima Naji, a Moroc- can architect and anthropologist, works with traditional con- struction materials and methods to preserve villages and communal centers in the country. She restored the Id Issa Granary in Amtoudi (seen here), which protected wheat and other forms of wealth.

‘PEOPLE ARE SCARED, leading architects, regrets some of the aesthetic AND YOU CAN UNDER- changes that have come with the exodus. But STAND WHY. SOME- he says it’s only natural that people would favor TIMES THE WALLS concrete. Most traditional mud structures per- JUST FALL DOWN. mit only small windows that let in minimal light, YOU COULD DIE.’ and most of them require regular maintenance of the kind that time-pressed or leisure-seeking LEGNAOUI BIL EID, FARM LABORER families prefer to avoid. “These kinds of designs might be exotic if you come from London or Paris Until the late 1990s, the historic ksar, or for- for one or two days,” he says. “But if you’re given tified village, of Bounou in southern Morocco a choice, you’ll prefer to live somewhere else.” trilled with the sound of more than a hundred families. But its rammed-earth walls began to As much of Morocco has shifted from com- collapse, and a falling gatehouse badly injured a munal to more individualistic lifestyles, and teenage boy, shaking residents’ faith in the ksar’s as incomes have increased enough for people structural integrity. Tales of even worse disas- to afford AC, mud houses—and their reliance ters elsewhere—some fatal—reinforced that fear. on the collective to maintain and often build Gradually, Legnaoui Bil Eid and his family found them—do appear increasingly out of step with themselves almost alone. Now, without the criti- modernity. Deeper environmental and economic cal mass of residents needed to maintain the his- forces, though, frequently leave little choice. In torical crenellated defenses, the ksar is crumbling the countryside, drought and desertification are at record pace, becoming an even riskier habitat. hobbling agriculture, the dominant rural pro- fession. That loss of viable livelihoods is driving “People are scared, and you can understand people into the cities. Some villages have lost up why,” says Bil Eid, an agricultural laborer who to half their inhabitants to urban areas in recent earns extra income roping together palm-frond years. It’s all contributing to a situation where fences to keep encroaching desert sands at many fearful and displaced villagers have also bay. “Sometimes the walls just fall down. You ended up unhappily living in concrete. could die.” “You need to understand how much I miss the In one of climate change’s many bitter ironies, cool of my old house. Few of us wanted this,” says the same warming that has bolstered mud’s Driss Mataoui, who migrated from a mountain importance against heat is also triggering more village to an impoverished Marrakech neigh- extreme weather events, which imperil mud borhood 30 years ago. “But life demanded that I structures. Despite frequently resurfacing his move to the city, and city life is not good for mud.” home’s exterior walls, Bil Eid says, the down- pours these days are far too strong to keep the Urbanization presents a particular challenge interior dry, no matter how much protective lay- for proponents of traditional materials and ering he adds. He too is thinking of relocating. building techniques. Although mud has histor- ically been deployed in dense urban settings, as In Telouet, in the Atlas Mountains between with Yemen’s centuries-old skyscrapers, archi- Bounou, in the Sahara, and Marrakech, those tects fear for its place in cities of the sort that fiercer rains have combined with the impact of are swelling across Africa. The helter-skelter, centuries of deforestation to fuel devastating unplanned nature of those booming metropo- flash floods through the denuded valleys. Most lises doesn’t always allow for the effective use years, at least a few locals die. Those who remain of wind direction, airflow, and other natural have noted that it’s concrete houses, not those cooling devices. For their part, insurance compa- made of the traditional mixed mud and stone, nies and municipalities remain unconvinced of that appear to weather the torrents. mud’s safety, so they frequently legislate against its use. Even obtaining traditional materials in Some of the abandonment of traditional urban settings can be surprisingly tricky. materials may simply be a function of chang- ing tastes. In his lush, beautifully maintained “Where are you going to get mud to build at garden in Marrakech’s leafy northern periphery, scale close to here?” asks Kabbaj. “You have to Mohamed Amine Kabbaj, one of the country’s go kilometers away.” Assailed by some of the same debilitating heat as their Sahelian neighbors to the south, and 128 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

Staying cool is vital in the Anti Atlas mountains of southern Morocco, where it’s so hot that even the crops require shade.

with air-conditioning still beyond many people’s means, the likes of Salima Naji aren’t admitting defeat yet. She has noticed more interest in mud architecture among villagers across Morocco, many of whom grasp its tourism potential. Naji and her peers highlight the strong environ- mental imperative to rein in, or at least reform, concrete production in Morocco, where develop- ers have robbed entire beaches of sand for use in construction. Elsewhere, in countries like Viet- nam and Bangladesh, developers source much of their sand from riverbeds, which fuels soil sub- sidence and more intense erosion and flooding. But reviving a tradition when it’s already lost its grip on the public imagination is a formidable task. People have grown accustomed to building houses as and when their finances allow, some- thing that mud construction, fragile until com- pletion, doesn’t permit. In some places, concrete access has expanded so dramatically and knowl- edge of mud has dropped so precipitously that the more modern material may be cheaper. Most important, climate and other struggles continue to eviscerate the social and natural environment in which this kind of construction was embedded. And that could be key. Can traditional architec- ture thrive when so much that buttressed it can’t? “This is all connected to society. You cannot disconnect it from everything that is going on around us,” Naji acknowledges. “But still we push ahead. If you have just one, two, three of these [buildings], it’s not enough. We’re trying to create a snowball effect to normalize it again. We need people to see this.” AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE surprised by our success.” Kéré and other mud advocates have been hard F R A N C I S K É R É I S I N a reflective mood when I call. Each of the past few rainy seasons has been at work trying to rehabilitate the material’s image. more destructive than the last, obliterating hun- They’re finding ways to protect mud buildings dreds of mud-brick buildings across Burkina from downpours—by adding broader, metal can- Faso, including a school, which collapsed on a opy roofs that project more than three feet from classroom of children, and part of the celebrated the walls, for example, or mixing small portions Grand Mosque of Bobo-Dioulasso. The subse- of cement into the mud bricks to fortify them. quent bad press has only reinforced the clamor for concrete, no matter the cost. Just making mud bricks more available can help. In an industrial park outside the Burkinabe But Kéré’s phone is ringing off the hook with capital, Mahamoudou Zi’s workers cut, condense, requests for work, and he’s bullish about mud’s and sell thousands of standard-size compressed- prospects. “It’s a matter of time, it’s a matter of earth bricks—providing the reliable supply and belief, it’s a matter of political will. It’s a fight, ease of construction that contribute to the suc- and we’re not looking left and right. I just push cess of concrete. “I remember how cool my grand- on,” he says. “There’s a lot of accumulated father’s house was,” Zi says. “I wanted to make it knowledge now. In 10 years, you’re going to be simpler for others to replicate this experience.” 130 N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C

The United Arab Emirates has an impres- sive but largely lost tradition of mud con- struction. For the Louvre Abu Dhabi, architect Jean Nouvel’s design was inspired by moucharaby lattice- work screens, which protect interiors from direct sunlight and provide natural ven- tilation. This massive moucharaby creates what’s been called a rain of light over the museum. Through a rigorous emphasis on not cutting and at the Burkina Institute of Technology, a corners with a material that is unforgiving of technical college. Teachers at the schools say shoddy construction, the mud architects hope that the hundreds of students can concentrate to limit the building collapses that are damning better—under the multilayered and overhanging them all by association. At her construction site roofs, between compressed-earth-brick walls, in Kaya, Clara Sawadogo says she has had to and surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows. be so exacting in erecting the vaulted roof that 15 of her original 25 masons quit, citing the dif- To one 18-year-old computer science student, ficulty of the work. who gave his name as Nataniel and who’s never lived in a home with electricity, let alone cooling, More than anything, though, Kéré wonders if, it’s almost as if these places are air-conditioned. after being fed a steady diet of half-truths about mud’s dangers and concrete’s promise, wary “We were told mud was bad,” he says. “We citizens simply need more everyday examples were told we needed to work to escape this. But I of what well-built mud architecture can offer. would be happy to live in something like this.” j Around Koudougou, 60 miles west of Ouaga- dougou, he has tried to create something of a Journalist Peter Schwartzstein is based in Athens, showcase at a secondary school, Lycée Schorge, Greece, and focuses on food, water, and climate. Moises Saman’s photography centers on the Mid- dle East and North Africa. M A D E F R O M M U D 131

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