This machine turns rubble from bombed Ukrainian buildings into Lego-like blocks that can make new homes

The concept is to recycle and use what's there," says Nic Matich, one of the cofounders of Mobile Crisis Construction, the Australia-based nonprofit that designed the equipment. A mill grinds up old walls, glass, and debris into a fine material that's mixed with a small amount of clay, cement, and water. Then the machine presses it all into a block. The blocks take a few days to cure, and then can be used to build walls. The interlocking shape of the blocks means that they can be stacked together without traditional mortar.

A single machine can make up to 8,000 bricks per day; the nonprofit estimates that it can produce enough blocks to construct 10 homes every three days. Matich, who has a background in crisis response, and cofounder Blake Stacey, an engineer with expertise in bricks, started working on the project around five years ago after talking about a design for interlocking blocks over drinks at a pub.

Read at Fast Company