Slow Baja - Itamar Lilienthal Fusing Architecture Biodesign And Art

Episode Date: April 26, 2026

Can fog become a lifeline for semi-arid desert communities, providing a sustainable source of clean drinking water? Can the act of capturing water and reducing waste become a foundation for cultural identity? Itamar Lilienthal, a Baja-based architect, designer, and artist, answers these questions through work that fuses bold, contemporary design with a deep reverence for local climate, indigenous materials, and community needs.Itamar’s projects, which feature adaptive cultural spaces that prioritize passive cooling, natural light, and sustainable techniques, champion the unique beauty and challenges of the Baja landscape. In this episode, we’ll unpack his design process, his artistic mindset, and the bold pursuit of weaving free thinking and recycled materials into architecture. Let’s dive in.Follow Itamar Lilienthal here. Itamar on Instagram here.Support the Slow Baja Podcast here.Buy Baja Bound Insurance here.

Hey, this is Michael Emery. Thanks for tuning into the slow Baja. This podcast is powered by Tequila Fortaleza, handmade in small batches and hands down my favorite tequila. Well, if you've been listening to me for a while, you know I'm an absolute minimalist when it comes to Baja travel. But the one thing I never leave home without is a good old paper map. and my favorite is the beautiful, and I mean beautiful, Baja Road and Recreation Atlas by benchmark maps. It's an oversized 72-page book, jam-packed with details, and now you can get it from me at slowbaha.com. That's right. You can get it in the Slow Baja shop, and in fact, you better get two, one for your trip planning at home, and one for your Baja rig. And if you love maps and you can't get enough of them like me, let me.

tell you about two sites I am absolutely obsessed with. Eastview MapLink and Longitude Maps.com, whatever you're looking for in Maps, it's there. From the entire benchmark collection to Baja Wall Maps, to Custom Maps, you'll find it all at LongitudeMaps.com or EVMapLink.com. You know I've long said it, ask your doctor if Baja's right for you. Well, if you've been hankering to get down to Slow Baja with me, you got to check out the Adventures tab at Slowbaha.com. All my trips are there from my famed fall vintage extravaganza to my winter and summer expeditions, which are open to trucks of any age. You know, on a Slow Baja expedition, your meals are always included, which really does take the sting out of camping.

And when we get off the trail, let me tell you, we have the happiest of happy hours. If good dirt roads, private campsites, Rant stays, great food, and great people sounds like you're kind of fun, well, you've got to check out the Adventures tab at slowbaha.com. But don't delay. These trips are small, they're highly immersive, and they will sell out. And folks, just so you know, I am always here for you for your Baja trip planning questions. One question, 100 questions, the easy way to get me is slowbaha.com slash contact.

And if you'd like to go to Baja and you don't want to go by yourself, you don't have a vintage vehicle, my winter trip doesn't work out for you. I am happy to talk to you about organizing and leading a private guided tour. I've done it. I've loved it. The pictures are over there at slowbaha.com slash adventures. And you can check them out. And if you've got some questions, let's talk. Thanks for tuning in to today's Slow Baja podcast. My heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Edgar Hakomé Guzman, my extraordinarily talented photographer that comes with me on all my Slow Baja trips. He arranged this interview many months ago and I got a chance to meet with Itamar Lillianthal today's guests in a drizzly day and plias and Edgar arranged the whole thing

and I'm indebted to him and I'm indebted to him as a photographer because we were just on the Slow Baja Winter Expedition together and I really love the way that Edgar moves through the world and captures every minute on my trips. He does such an extraordinary job. So thank you, Edgar, deeply sincerely. I also have a second heaping dose of gratitude today. Never had two, but today's second heaping dose of gratitude goes out to Eric Lippincott from Camp Tech. Eric does these amazing popped up conversions on land cruisers. And he and I have been talking about getting a camp tech for you know i have frank now my docs and frank travels with me and frank has some demands that uh the old fj 40 just haven't hasn't been meeting so was able to uh jump into a camp

tech uh eric had a friend in colorado Alex and uh Alex is making some life changes and moving away from some of his lane cruiser some of his land cruiser some of his land cruisers in his collection and i was able to swoop in on a snowy day and pick up this amazing 1990 Land Cruiser FJ80, Spanish import, turbo diesel, five-speed, left-hand drive, camp tech conversion. Man, it is nice. And I drove it straight from Baja, straight from Colorado down to Baja. Pre-ran for my slow Baja winter expedition and then led the expedition in this truck. And wow, it's been amazing. I've been three weeks camping in this truck already. now on the old Mojave Road Trail with the guys from Camp, from the guys from Camp Tech,

the guys from Red Line Land Cruiser in Colorado Springs, so many Colorado connections. And I've wanted to drive this road for quite a while, and I'm super stoked that I get to drive it with these guys. We've got three FJ 40s and one Jeep Cherokee that's been in the shop or being repaired almost every day. Not saying anything about those jeeps, but it's been a wonderful trip.

And without further ado, Itamar, Lillianthal, call him Ita on the Slow Baja podcast. Maybe, yeah, it's going to be like NPR. NPR. NPR. Well, hopefully we won't get defunded. Yeah.

Oh, Jesus, crap. My God. So one thing to know about me, I'm a closeted comedian. So a lot of times, they'll try to make jokes. Some of them land, some of them don't. All right. Half of the time people don't even realize I'm doing a joke. I don't even know I'm making a joke, but I'm kind of one of those people that always goes for it.

So you were the class clown, but you were also super smart, right? This is the thing I never was good at education. Really? Like, I would say until recently that I did a master's, I did a master's in bio-architecture in London, and that was like a post-pandemic post-mid-life or quarter-life crisis. Hopefully it wasn't a mid-life crisis. Quarter-life crisis. fiasco that it was the first time that I like chose myself to be told what to do.

Because before I was always like, if you told me to do this, I would do the opposite just to prove a point, you know? Right there. So education has never been my forte. I think, I mean, I feel like I am a smart person not to like pat myself in the back, but I feel like I, you know, I'm, I know what's going on in the world. Judging from my research of you, you've, you have to be, you can't be an idiot doing what you're doing, man. Well, I think I'm curious.

Don't mean that to be as a, no, no, no, over compliment you right away, but yeah. Thank you. No, thank you. I appreciate it. But I would say, I'm just a very curious person. I would say that that's definitely like, if, because a lot of people like, you know, friends or just people I meet that say like, oh, you know, I can't do this, I can't do that. Or like, I was born, you know, with lesson I tell them. I mean, honestly.

The only reason I am where I am is out of pure curiosity and drive of literally like, you know, I've, whenever I've had a job, I've never had to send a resume because I was always like, I'm going to work with you, whether you like it or not. And I'm going to show up even if you tell me not to. And that has now led me to where I am today. But I think grit, drive, and curiosity is what I've had. Maybe my parents did pass on some jeans. I'll give them some, you know, some points there.

But I think it's definitely been curiosity that has gotten me where I am because now I'm at that point where like, so I mean, to give you kind of like a little update on how I got here. And I was telling you a bit before we started recording. I was born in Mexico City. I have two old, one older brother, one younger, me and my older brother, who is also really interesting person for you to talk. with. We've always kind of been, you know. Didn't we just hear from Punk that he has an interesting brother? Yeah, Tulengua Allen. He hosts a K PBS podcast, Port of Entry. He has a band. Like, it's funny because he's always been the musician and I've always been the visual artist. And that's kind of always always been, maybe it was also just like friend, so we wouldn't like step on each other's toes, but we've always complimented each other that way. But I'll let him tell his story. But for me, so I always started as an artist.

I was drawing on my parents' couches when we were little, you know. And for me, art was always this very, you know, idealistic idea that a painting could solve the world, you know? And I still love painting. You know, I feel like if I was at peace in every sense of the world, whether it was like financially, environmentally, health-wise, painting is like a very meditative process for me, very slow. but it's like, you know, it's like I really center myself with it.

It's a process. But I think where I got to a point is I was doing these paintings, and for whatever reason, climate change or the environment was kind of the issue that stuck with me since I was a little kid, or that was, I mean, little kid, I guess, high school, but now hindsight is I was pretty young. So that really started asking, it made me ask questions of where do these materials come from?

because it felt very, you know, kind of counterintuitive or just hypocritical if I'm making a painting about safe planet Earth out of spray paints, you know, or out of acrylic. Yeah, well, you're not the first hypocrite. There you go. But, yeah, but I think with me was always like, I think that was one of the issues that it was like always, like washing my brushes after painting was like my heart would break

because it would be like, where is this going? And then on top of that, So none of my parents are artists. I kind of learned how to do art on my own. I will say my parents have always been, or were always super supportive of me, but I had to teach myself, and I remember when I went to university for art,

the first thing they said was that you should never leave a can of turpentine of oil, paint thinner, like open. It's very dangerous health-wise. What did I do all of high school? leave a can of turpentine in my bedroom open at all times. So it was a mixture of personal health but also environmental health that really kind of hit home. And that kind of led me to really get into materials of,

okay, what am I doing my paints with? It first started with like making paint out of trash, cardboard. You know, I had a, at one point I was making these things called like sidewalk surfboards, like skateboards, but out of cardboard. Because it was always really looking at, but then I realized, oh, the resin, it's cardboard, but you're mixing it with resin. Are you really doing anything better? Not really. And so that was kind of like where my work would keep pushing me. It was like, all right, now I'm going to make art, but environmental art.

So I was buying soy-based paints and stuff like that. But everything you buy, you realize if you go down that rabbit hole long enough, it's all so bad. Yeah. So that's kind of where, like, in a nutshell, how I started feeling, it was like, my house is burning and I'm worrying about how I'm going to decorate it, you know? Wow. So that's kind of like, in a way, it was like, you know, it's like, really, like, and it's not that I'm not, I don't love making art, I still love art. But for myself, it kind of led me to a more, at the time, this was, what, 10, 15 years? years ago, industrial design is what you would call it now, like product design.

You can't see it in the camera, but like this backpack is one that I made while I was living here in Playaas, which is, you know, car seat, like seat belts that I literally went to the junkyard and like cut myself, all the upholstery fabrics that I would get from like upholstery shops and then El Rosal like flower bags. So that was kind of like where it took me because it was like art is one of a kind. If I really want to make change, I need to, you know, have something that is mass-producible, know, like a product. But then I also realize I hate products.

Like it's not my, it's not my forte. I don't want to be stuck in a room making the same thing over and over and over. Even if it's the best thing for the world, I can't do that. A sweatshop full of people cutting. Yeah, a sustainable sweatshop. Powered on renewable energy, but it still sucks. But yeah, so that was kind of where, but so I felt very lost. This is kind of like I'm jumping many, you know.

Yeah, it's going to be all over the place, there's no way to eat us all over and I love it. Thank you, thank you. So just keep it up. That evolution. So that's, we're hearing about your evolution as a human and your evolution as a designer and it's getting towards architecture. Amen.

Yeah. So, so let's get, let's jump. Yeah, so I'll give you a like, kind of, I leave university. This was like 10 plus years ago from New York. Do you mind telling us where you went? Yes, I was, I did my business. I did my bachelor's in NYU, fine art, studio art. And I, so this is kind of where it got funny.

So I had a girlfriend at the time. And our plan was to like after university, you know, go travel South America, whatever. And I had been doing a job at my, at the wood shop at my school to, you know, to save some money, which this is how like amateur I was to all this stuff. Like I remember, because my parents never taught me woodworking anything like that.

I remember in the wood shop the first time that I did like this sculpture out of like plywood that I cut with a jigsaw that I didn't sand the edges because I didn't know you like I didn't even know what sandpaper was. I remember like I turned it in and the guy next to me who grew up with a dad that had like a garage shop had like a beautiful sanded piece of wood and he had bought like you know kind of like varnish and I remember I literally go up to him and like where did you get that wood from? I went to the wood shop and all I could find was like cream colored wood.

I wanted some of the darker wood. He's like, what do you mean? Like, I put the varnish on it. So deeply ignorant in the kind of sense of the word. Literally. No, like I literally. In the kind of sense of the word, you had no idea. No, no, no.

It was very, but again, the curiosity. It was like, instead of kind of feeling ashamed and going back, I was like, all right, like, that's how you learn, I guess. But so that's kind of how, like, how young I was or how, like, little I knew when I started. But I graduated university. I had saved up all this money. me and my girlfriend break up, I have all this money that I had saved up,

and I'm like, you know what, I don't feel like going to travel anymore. And I get this like epiphany one day that I'm like, you know what, I'm going to do a portable, renewable energy generator. Just like, why not? This is like the archives. You can't even find this on the website because it's like old, old. But I was like, yeah, how hard can it be? You know, I'll make, like, kind of like the most beautiful thing

to charge your phone out of solar energy. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to move to San Francisco. and, you know, just do it. Like, it was at the time where the startup fever was, you know, it was like everyone wanted to go to San Francisco to have a startup and stuff. So I go there. You know, I work out a maker space. I keep learning fabrication techniques like CNC, you know, like millings, laser cutting.

I keep realizing that energy is really hard. You know, and there's only, and this is one of the things that I keep telling people now that A lot of people have very good ideas, but they're not realistic. And that's something that I tell myself every time. I can tell you, I can sell you something that's going to make you be like, oh my God, that needs to be. But if you don't have enough surface area on a roof, no matter how much you want to, or if you don't get enough sun,

you're not going to generate the energy necessary. And that's something that I realize. In order to have something that can power your phone and solar energy in like an hour, you need a huge solar panel and not something that's going to be. of fitting your pocket. Huge mirrors that pop out that concentrate it. Exactly. And that also got me into fog harvesting, which is the same thing because now fog harvesting

here in Baja, which I will say, ensignada, huge on fog harvesting potential. Not that easy though. A lot of people see something on the internet, Instagram. They're like, oh yeah, like let's do it. Like just this morning, we went to go see this plot of land down in Baja and they showed me kind of like these renders that a previous architect had done. And yeah, he just puts like, oh yeah, we're going to have a fog farm. And I just look at it, I'm like, that's cute, but that's not going to work.

You need to worry about altitude, wind speed, like all these things that, and I'm not saying that it can't be done. Like, I'm not going to be one to be like, oh, it's not doable. I'm all for pushing your dreams and being like, but you've got to be realistic. It's another thing that now with like biode design, one of the Holy Grails, which I also drank the Kool-Aid of, and I was very stoked on it, is like bioluminescent trees. So this idea is that just how you have like bioluminescent. algae or like mushrooms and stuff, you could genetically like synthetically engineer like an organism

to shine. And I'm like, oh my God, that's cool. Like imagine if you had like a park where instead of lamplights, you had trees that glow at night. Like how cool is that? That's like avatar. But I, again, the curiosity drove me down the rabbit cause. I'm like, I need to figure out if this works. And I met a guy when I was living in San Francisco who was actually trying to develop it. and what happens, it's the same thing as solar energy. A plant can only shine as bright as the energy can absorb. And if a plant can only absorb X amount of energy, it can only shine a certain brightness.

No matter like this idea that you're going to have a light, a tree that it glows as much as the sun, not that it can't be done, but it can't be done. You know, it's hard. Which I'm all for, like, people are continually doing it, but you've got to be realistic about that. Right. But anyway, so I go to San Francisco.

Francisco, I weirdly enough meet this guy who's like a big shot MIT engineer. Crazy dude. He has a company called Other Labs, Saul Griffith, who like, I feel you would like him. When he was in MIT, he's an Australian guy. He built, he was a big kite surfer, but he did a kite surfer, but instead of like on a surfboard over ocean, it was over a frozen lake. So it was like a surfboard with like a blade and a kite. Wow. And let's just say he's gotten a lot of surgeries done. I would imagine.

He's broken a lot of bones. But he's a dreamer. He's a crazy one. You know, he sold a company to Google of, like, generating energy with, like, kites, like in the sky.

So it's like wind power, but, you know, so like kite energy. So I go to work with him because I see that he had developed, so at this point I had given up solar energy. I'm like, if you want to do this at scale, it has to be like hand crank.

And he had actually done something like that. and he told me, he's like, it can't be done. Like, the numbers just, like, I like your energy, but it can't be done. Like, the numbers, the numbers just, the math won't add up. But he's like, if you want you, can come work with me and, like, learn. So I'm like, yeah, giddy up. I go to work with him for a couple, it was a couple months,

and that's when I got, like, you know, very grounded because I was around very, you know, square engineers, that it's like they're not even going to dream if the numbers don't even let them dream in the first place. But while now it was there, I realized that there was this guy, Phil Ross, that grew furniture and stuff out of mushrooms. This was back in like 2014, before like biometrials was even a thing. And I'm like, I hit him up.

I was an intern in this company. I hit him up. He thinks I'm like a big shot there. But yeah, come in, like we should do a project dealer. He comes in and does a presentation and then he realizes I'm an intern. He's like, dude, what the hell? You know, it goes out to the big guys. Just got to do it by the intern.

But I'm telling you, I'm like, yeah, dude, I got to work with you. Like, you're like, this is a few things. Like I've got to work with you and I leave the other job that actually paid to go to this startup that was next to bankrupt to Basically get paid next to nothing, but I'm like dude. I needed like this is the future So for like a year like it's like three people in a garage in Like right above not the mission I haven't been not a knob hill noah hill noi valley Noi valley noi valley around there. Yeah, it was grand view somewhere there but anyways just up the hill from the downtown part exactly exactly So we're in a basement there, just literally like getting bags of mushrooms of Rashi, Gannaderma,

breaking it up, put it into molds and trying to create like a mushroom leather. And that was like, that was fun. It was a lot of learned. But again, I realized I'm not a good employee. Wow. We've traveled pretty far. So born in Mexico City. Yes.

How old were you when your parents brought you to? Six. to San Diego. Six. And you have some siblings. Let's talk about those for just a second. Yeah, so my older brother, Alan, he's a musician, creator. He's in real estate, does music that has a podcast.

He started a podcast similar to, like, kind of what you're doing, that he's just, like, interesting people he wanted to talk to. And then one day, KPBS is going to be doing a podcast on cross-border stories, and they're like, hey, do you want to be the host of it? Yep, have listened to him. Oh, there you go. was your brother. Yeah, there you go.

Their voices sound very similar. All right. So, yeah, so he does that. And then our younger brother, Dan, he is living in New York right now. He has a, he started a, like a music app called Untitled. It's for like unreleased music. And he's killing him. Awesome.

Like probably most musicians that you can hear have used it or are using it. So you come from some creative, you have creative siblings. Yes. And how does, how do you, um, navigate both sides of the border. You're here now in Tijuana. Yeah, you live here? I live in Valle de Guadalupe at the moment.

Okay. Ensenada, Bay. All right. I honestly, like, so after this interview, I'm going to go back to San Diego. Because just to see the family for a bit, they're actually taking care of my dog right now. All right. Frank is right here on my lap. Second podcast.

He's getting used to it. There you go, yeah. But yeah, I mean, honestly, so at the moment, I don't have. my century anymore, so it's going to be a long day. Yeah, mine got pulled as well, but I'm going south instead of going north. Oh, you're lucky, you're lucky. But yeah, I mean, so honestly, I mean, this is a thing we can go in so many topics, but the reason I love this region, and San Diego Tijuana, San Diego Baja, whatever you want

to call, Las Californias is kind of the term that I've kind of fallen into using is because Because on so many levels, it's so interesting. And it's kind of like depending what answer you want, I can answer it to that. But it is where the global north and the global styles not only meet, they crash. You know, and it's from an architecture perspective, which we haven't even tapped into, it is so interesting the fact that because of a wall that was created, everything changes the second you cross it. One side, you know, building codes, the color of the asphalt.

the food, the waste systems, the people, the language, the culture. And it's so exciting. Like, I brought people, one time I had these Germans from Europe, as Germans are. They came, and we were doing, like, some conference in San Diego and, like, I be in Imperial Beach. And the last day of the conference, I had, it was when I was living here in Playas, I volunteered to, you know, I'll take you guys down to Playa, people love seeing where the border meets the ocean because nobody really thinks about it where does it end. They just think it's a wall. And they came down and they walked playas where you have like the band that's playing super loud.

And coming from San Diego, they were just in love. This is so much cooler than the other side. Now I know what you live here because it's so raw, you know? And that's why I love this. That's why I love this region. Then going even another step into what I do, which is like bio design or, you know, bio architecture, or whatever you want to put bio in front of. San Diego, Tijuana is the most exciting place in my opinion

because on San Diego side, it's become one of the biotech capitals of the world. You have all the new buildings like Horton Plaza, et cetera, that are getting retrofitted or being built from scratch to be state-of-the-art biology, bio labs. Generally, it started for healthcare, but things evolve. And then on the Tijuana side, you have a lot of space where you can actually put these ideas into practice. Build, you have more like loose regulations

where you can actually do stuff without all the due diligence and permits you would have to do in San Diego. And a lower price point. Exactly. Yeah. So here you, there's no other place where you have, like we all know the benefits that you have from the global north

and the benefits you have from the global south. But there's no other place that these two benefits are a drive away. And that's what's so cool about this region. There's no other place in the world that has this culture, this reality to grapple with. And then on top of that, you have Tijuana, which is a city. And this is how I always say it. It's like a city that should have never existed, that it was forced to exist because of the wall. Like every other city in the world that is created is created around, you know, a waterway, an ocean, like some strategic point.

Tijuana was created at the strategic point was a wall. So when you look at the urban layout of Tijuana, it's like all smacked against the wall. And even though we're here in Plias, they like, the people, the Tijuana, they never even developed a port in Pallias or anything because it was never necessary. The port was crossing into San Diego. And here you have Tijuana, which is like, it's like it shouldn't have existed, but it's probably going to exist way longer than any of us. And that's why, like, even if you look at a lot of like anime or like Japanese sci-fi shows of the future, the first episode is always in Tijuana, like new Tijuana of the future, because it's like, it has to exist, you know?

And that's why I find Tijuana such a horribly incredible place, you know? We're going to take a break right here on a horribly incredible note, and we'll be right back with Ita. I'm excited. Here at SLOBA, we can't wait to drive our old land cruiser south of the border. When we go, we'll be going with Baja bound insurance. websites fast and easy to use, check them out at Bajabound.com. That's Bajabound.com, serving Mexico travelers since 1994. Hey, big thanks to those of you who've contributed to our Baja Baseball Project. You know, we launched our gear deliveries on my winter expedition. Michael and Matthew

from Barbers for Baja. We're along for the ride, and we got to deliver that critically needed baseball gear up and down the peninsula. It was really, truly amazing. All right, well, please, help us continue this vital work. Make your tax deductible donation at the Barbers for Baja. Click barbers for Baja.org. Click the Baseball in Baja link. And I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I really do. It is so amazingly gratifying to be able to give these kids this chance to keep playing this sport. Keep them on the field. Keep them out of trouble. Please check it out. Baseball in Baja link at barbers for Baja.org. Thank you. want to tell you about these new Rocky Talky radios that I absolutely love. Heavy duty,

beautifully made, easy to program, easy to use. We had 28 people, 15 trucks on the Slow Baja Winter Expedition. You can hand these radios to anybody from a 14-year-old kid to an 80-year-old and they'll know how to use it. They are that well designed. One charge lasted the entire week. We are never out of range. I happen to upgrade to the accessory whip antenna for my radio and for my sweeps radio, the Donovan Brothers. We were never out of contact. I can't say it strongly enough. Rocky Talky radios, rockytockey.com.

Check them out. Slow Baja approved. We're back. We're back with Ita. We're talking about how, well, we're talking about everything, man. Yeah, there you go. We're talking about everything all at once. It's a little bit like Tijuana all.

everything all at once, all jammed together against the wall. Amen. I mean, one time, and you can probably look at this map if you Google it, but there's like a color-coded map of the zoning of the border region, San Diego in Tijuana. You look at San Diego, and it's the most beautiful ordered, you know, Red Scare for residential, industrial, et cetera. And then you look in south of the board,

and it's like a bag of Skittles. And that's, but that's what I love, you know. I had a taco shop walking distance from my house when I lived here, which in San Diego, I have to take a car. Yeah. And it also sucks because I will say from like an urban development standpoint, having industry and residential so close together is really not healthy for the individual. Like San Diego, this is the thing about San Diego is right there.

Okay. Like San Diego is the kind of place where you are in paradise all the time because it's so well designed that you will never see something you don't want to see. De Juan is the opposite. You can be having the best day and then you'll see something that breaks your hard and you're like there's no way to ignore it you know it's smack in the middle in your face yeah yeah but think how exciting the little italy development is in san diego where they actually put residential above retail which you know in san francisco that's a hundred years ago they had that

or 150 years ago they had here's the apartment above the restaurant here's the apartment above the store and now that's happening here which is making people flock to that area because it's all smashed together. Right, right, right. Yeah. And even literally literally, it's crazy because I remember that a friend was visiting me a couple weeks ago in San Diego and we're in Little Italy and they're love in it and then the plane flies over.

They're like, who would live here? You're telling me this is like premium real estate? Yeah. And then the plane flies over actually right on top of you. Yeah. And it's really, but literally did it. But it's so interesting is looking into San Diego, you have down to the United States. you have downtown San Diego, and then on one side you have literally,

and then on the other side you have Barrio Logan, which could not be more dramatic, but at the same time they both kind of exploded in popularity at a similar time, but the way each of them chose to kind of take that popularity and develop is so different, and they both have their own value in their own sense, but it just shows like, yeah, just how different things can be, and then you, well, then you have Tijuana. Yeah. Hey, let's talk about your work.

Okay. Your work, work, your projects. Okay. Seweed lampshades. Earth, you're using the earth. And I mean, why am I putting words into your mouth? Explain to me what you do, young man. All right, all right.

So, okay. So, yeah. So you do some pretty amazing stuff. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, finally, it's catching up. I just gave a workshop on, this is probably one of my favorite stuff that I've done to date.

it's a material made out of beer waste. And that one is really exciting because without going too deep into geeking out. So when I started with biomaterials, the first one I did in San Francisco, which my boss at the time called hippie shit, literally because it was fallen leaves. I'm walking around in San Francisco and you have all these leaves that fall down. They get thrown away and I'm like, this is like an incredible material. Well, we compost them in San Francisco. But even then, they trucked them 100 miles away and then compost them.

Yeah. So I'm like, okay, let's try to do something with this. I remember I was like collecting all these leaves I was living in like noi, not Noi Valley, not, I don't remember. Dubose Triangle. Okay. Yeah. Great area. Debo's triangle.

But anyways. And at the time, and this is what you'll see with a bunch of biomaterials. Like they'll generally find some form of ag waste and then use the same types of binders to bind it altogether. And these binders are generally bought out of store. somewhere, industry to produce, and that can be cornstarch, alginate, which comes from seaweed, et cetera. So even though you think you're doing something new, you're not really. Like, I like the, I like the energy, you know. This material with beer, what I've discovered is I found a way to process the beer, the spent grains that comes from the brewery process. For them to,

after like cooking them for a long time, they produce their own glue. So I've created these materials that are 100% beer. No other stuff added, you know? And that's why I'm super excited about it because it has so much potential and beer is one of these things that is found all across the world. It's made all over the world. It's like I call it like an urban vernacular, you know, and generally it's in like hip areas where it's maybe more affluent. It's in a warehouse. So they have these space to develop these other byproducts out of their stuff. And historically, they would send all their ways to farms. But as the world gets more urbanized,

breweries get more urbanized, the farms go further away. It gets more and more expensive, and environmentally less attractive to ship them 100 yards or 100 miles, sorry. 100 yards would be very easy. 100 miles. 100 miles different. Yeah, so seaweed.

So that's kind of where it also connects with seaweed. We've all been at the ocean. We're hanging out at the beach. We see seaweed. We touch it. It's sticky. That's alginate. All the alginate here in San Diego,

and it's still around, we had a company called Kelpco. They've now transitioned to other stuff, but it was like the biggest, like, harvester of giant kelp in the San Diego region. It was a huge company. They were based in Barrio Logan. And, like, everything you know, probably toothpaste, ice creams has algined in it because it's a thickener.

But that is basically the sticky stuff that the seaweed has. So what I realized was like, okay, cool, instead of introducing algae or some form of glue, what if I use heat and, like, press them together, and that's how I started developing the seaweed material. Wow. And I will say, this is a thing, it's like, whoever's listening in the future might sound very inspired,

and I will say, as excited as I am, I also know how hard it is to actually do it because I can come in and show you a little prototype. Now if I need to produce it at scale or at a consistent quality, that's when the real work comes in, and that's kind of where I've humbled myself in the last years as I get older.

with a building so I had my own design firm which is now an architecture and design firm Casa Tamarindo which I started back in 2017 so I came back from San Francisco when I realized I wasn't a good employee that if I wanted to really do what I wanted to do I needed to be my own boss so I moved back down to San Diego Tijuana start this bi-national design house which we were doing products stage design stuff like that pandemic happens everything freezes up and I'm like okay if I'm gonna be able do like a 180 in my life, now is the time, because otherwise you, generally when you're your own boss or with anything, you have to be thinking at least six months in advance for projects.

And now I don't have any projects. So I'm like, I've always wanted to do architecture, but it was always something that was like, should, it could have would have. But here comes a pandemic, and I find, I remember I Google one of the best architecture schools in the world, and I find one in London that I had never heard of. Now I know it's one of the best in the world. Bartlett in UCL, UCL University College London. And they have a program called Biointegrated Design, which is a master's in architecture that I qualified for because I don't have a bachelor's in architecture,

so most schools wouldn't even take me. This one takes me, and it's exactly what I want to do, which I've been doing, but thinking about it in the architectural scale. I moved to London. I focus a lot in kind of like passive bioclimatic design, kind of how you can, like for me, this is again another thing,

my passion and my dream is designing spas, that might seem like why spas? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why, I'm glad you asked. So if you look at before the Industrial Revolution, here, before the Industrial Revolution or before the invention of air conditioning, most cultures around the world had developed very ingenious ways of creating spas,

like the Romans, Moroccans, North Africa, Mexico, et cetera. And all of these were natural ways of creating high humidity places, cold, etc. AC comes along. All that goes out the window. We all of a sudden can just do a building and if we put in the AC, bam. But now with the environmental and stuff, a spa when you have to create a sauna of certain temperature next to a steam room, next to a cold plunge, if you can find the way of doing that as passively as possible, that is the Holy Grail.

And on top of that, you get to relax. So that's kind of why I'm so kind of excited with Spas because it's like a nice, it's a very small controlled space to try out wild ideas that if they work there, you can then put them into bigger stuff like buildings, etc. But that's kind of what I focused when I was in school, just simulations, computational design, etc.

And then I realized after school, I'm like, I was happy to stay to live in London. I'm happy to be an employee, at least a couple of years, etc. because I would have needed to get a visa. But then I realized because I'm not an official architect, I would have been like the assistant to the assistant to the assistant kind of thing. Designing dental offices. Literally and getting paid next to nothing. So I'm like, honestly, but I'll do it. You know what I mean? Like I'll humble for a couple of years, learn a little bit. And I come back to San Diego one day and I was going to do the seaweed

lamp, which was the first time that I, because I had been marinating. I had already developed the seaweed material, but I hadn't really explored it at that. the giant scale that I wanted to. So I'm like, you know, I'm going to move back to San Diego for two months, stay with the family while I'm looking for a job in London, do this lamp, and then go back. I move back, and every time I kid you not, I have my plane ticket, I'm going to fly back.

Another project comes. Another project comes better than the one before. And these projects are getting into the architectural scale, which not being a licensed or like a traditional architect, I'm like, this is a dream come true. I'm getting better projects than my professors back in London. And it's in a place that I love, you know, and I know this area.

So that's kind of when the last kind of like the nail in the coffin of me leaving this area that's kind of helped me hostage for a couple of years now, was I get an offer to design this kind of holistic wellness center, meditation retreat, restaurant, boutique hotel down in Bayje. And I'm like, whoa, like, this is too good to be true. Of course I'm going to take it. So what do I do? I move down to Vallet.

You know, rent a little Adobe. house that's like 100 years old and kind of just again go for it no idea what I'm doing it's been a lot of lessons learned because I'm and what I've realized it's like I'm not scared or my the part wasn't that I don't know how to do architecture I don't have good ideas but when you go to a traditional architecture schools they teach you how to present stuff the standards the line weights all the stuff so that when you give them to another architect or a builder they can read it and for me not having been taught that, I was just kind of, oh, I guess I'm just doing what looks cool. Now I've learned.

You're a musician who doesn't read music. Exactly. But you can improvise like hell. And it's weird because the best architects are non-trained architects like in the world today. You know, the ones that we admire are not. But at the same time, architects are very exclusive about who they led into their club. Because to be fair, they've worked up to 10 years to get their license and now here I come. Be like, hey, guys, I'm one of you.

And they're like, no, you're not. There's so many stay-at-home dads in my life in San Francisco who, who, were architects who had a wife with a really good job. Right, right. The architect had to stay home and raise the kids. There you go. There you go. But back to the creativity that you found in the Valle with your projects.

Just talk about that region and how your work has found a home there. So I will say that I feel that the home and now even with the other projects we're doing is all of Baja. Because even when I was in London, I was getting high off my own supply. of selling people on Baja because like, dude, like the future is in Baja. And Baja right now just happens to be kind of like the first place where it's really happening. But yeah, I see myself kind of, you know, I would love to build kind of like a castle in the middle of the mountains in Baja out of like the rocks that I found. But yeah, I think Valle is an exciting place right now because you have a lot of, you know, developers that are kind of competing with each other to make the coolest project available,

and they both want to be sustainable, at least pretend they're being sustainable. So they're willing to push these ideas, you know, and they're willing to sponsor these ideas and explore them. I will say as, you know, as I've been working on this project for a year, and it's an incredible project, it's called Agieca, and since then I've gotten other projects because of that. But if there's one thing that I've learned, I've been hugely humbled in the last year. Because again, coming from school or coming from, you know, smaller scale projects, it's very, I can sell you on an idea.

I can sell you on a spa that's bioclimatic that's going to be incredible. Executing it, and it's not only executing it because even if I am, which I'm not, but let's say I am like the most, you know, genius person in the world that knows everything, knowing how to delegate, finding a team, training the work. to build with these materials, having the confidence, there's so many layers to it, that it just makes you realize that when you do see an architectural project actually be successful,

you're just like, hats off, you know? Because not only was the idea good, the execution, like the state of the world, the costs, and I will say that I'm more invigorated than I was before in the importance of these things that I'm bringing to the table, because even in the last year, last year as globalization is coming to an end, the prices of these materials that used to be

the cheapest option building with concrete, even wood, everything is getting more expensive. So if you can find a local supply chain of better materials that also happen to be more sustainable but are more like predictably delivered, it's a huge opportunity. And that's kind of where Rabay is because you're kind of in the middle of nowhere. A lot of people, projects at it, and And that's kind of where I know. I've seen a lot of projects that when you look at the original renders, they would have been masterpieces, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful projects. And then the finished piece is...

And the reality is hit. Yeah, because I think a lot of developers don't realize how hard it is to build in value. You have rocks. You have, you know, you have to build all the installations, terrain. So it's such a headache that by the time you actually get to the building, you've spent so much money just to get there that you have to cut corners. and do something you're not proud of. And that's also something that I've realized

with this project that I can honestly say I have the best intention, but even with me having the best intention, there's so many things that can go wrong that can force you to make to, you know, cut corners even if you don't want to. So that's why also that if I see someone that has a project that isn't so good, I don't attack them anymore.

You know, I'm like, I'm sorry. You know what I mean? I was young at one point. Now I understand how hard it is. Because it's very, especially when you're in academia, like, it's so easy to criticize the state of the world and be like, oh, yeah, everyone's doing it wrong. We're the, we're the smart ones. But then you're like, yeah, of course. You've never built anything.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. As we're sitting in a structure that's repurposed out of a shipping container with wood that looks like it came out of pallets maybe. Probably. Rough cut lumber. Yeah. Well, what's keeping you busy now? You're still on the spa project?

So this project. Are you able to tell us the name of that? It's Ayeka, A-Y-E-K-A. Okay. Integrative Center. You can find that on Instagram. So my work there is coming to an end. I helped, you know, with the design of the spaces.

I helped them introduce some building techniques. We got a... So compressed earthbricks, I think, is the future. Because it's like Adobe, but unlike Adobe, where you generally use a higher water content and you need clay-y soil. Earth-bricks, you can either have clay-y soil or more sandy soil, and it uses less water. And it was kind of a technology that got invented in the 80s,

that basically you have like a press that compresses Earth at a very high power to produce these very strong brakes that hold together. You generally put 8% of cement or lime as a stabilizer to make it waterproof. So I think that's the future, to be honest, because it's local soil, easily produced consistent quality. Adobe has a higher learning curve

you know just it has its own issues because most of Valle is built with Adobe old school at Valle was made with Adobe that was the original structures and if you go to Valle you will still do driving around you will still see remnants of that yeah so that's done right now on one side I'm pushing the bio materials but that's kind of the thing is I know how hard it is if I wanted to get this beer material standardized and get regulated for like building it would be ahead of And I don't necessarily know if that's what I personally, me Iita wants to do. If there's any people out there that I want to partner, I'm all for it.

But that's not where my curiosity lies. I like developing these materials and doing my own experimentations. And if they work, then, you know, we can push it that way. Yeah. And are you a little bit of a mad scientist on your, like, kitchen at home? I'm a happy scientist. Happy scientist. I'm a happy scientist.

Happy scientist. Yeah, yeah. Good way of putting it. I mean, yeah, because that's also the thing. I started doing stuff in my kitchen. Yeah. And you're stopping next to the brewery and saying, hey, can you give me some some of that stuff, I have an idea.

How much of it do you need? Oh, they always want to give me more than I need. I'm like, no, no, no, I'm good right now. Like, our scale isn't there yet. I remember a couple weeks ago I was at Carl Strauss, because now I know which breweries have what I need. And I remember I jumped into the trash, whatever, container, thinking it was like, you know,

when you think something's only like two inches deep. And I remember I jumped in and like the grains went all the way above my knees. And to this day, I have some vans shoes that are just kind. covered in beer waste. So I think on one end, I'm pushing the architecture and getting very humbled in terms of that even if I know something isn't the best way to do it, sometimes you kind of have to do it that way because of costs, times, etc. But at the same time, I'm pushing the development of biomaterials.

And like right now we were actually looking in bio to start kind of like a school research lab place to do all this stuff and kind of open it to the public. Very similar, you being from San Francisco, you know, he ceramics and the mission. So, of course, yeah. Well, from Sausalito originally. Right, right. But you know the place they have in the mission that has like the factory and then you have a cafe, showroom. That's kind of the stuff I would like to do in Baleigh or honestly anywhere, even in Tijuana.

To kind of be creative in how you, how can you make the money to keep the lights on without feeling the pressure that you have to sell a certain amount. Kind of, you know, just Yeah, kind of Find different revenue streams In that sense Because a lot of the research is like I can make your beer material But that doesn't, even if I tell you

This could eventually work to build a house I wouldn't feel comfortable To have building you a house like that Until I'm sure that it's going to last. And having a research lab Where you are allowed to fail Is kind of the next step And I really want to bring

I have a friend from L.A. that has a robot. So we want to bring down a robot to do like 3D printing with it and stuff. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about the 3D squirting of mud to your project, isn't it? So right now. That's not a great way of describing it. Can you properly describe your 3D earthen printing process? So this is a thing.

So giving you an idea like when I first started, I thought I was going to be doing 3D printing with mud because there's a lot of people doing it out there. And in my university, we were doing that. But when you bring it at scale, especially if you're, you're not working on a flat terrain, not doable. So that's why we chose compressed earth bricks as a building material, building, uh, process of choice. Because it's very affordable still uses local soil and it's very easy to

train people to work with it. Because if you've built with bricks, it works that way. So does that mean every property that you're going to build is going to have a basement because you're extracting that, that soil from someplace or a swimming pool next door? I hope it has a swimming pool. Yeah. Um, I mean, I guess it depends on the size. You need that material though, right?

Yeah. You need to find that material. So that's kind of the issue that right now we are using local soil, but if I was producing these blocks at scale to sell to anyone, you would need to find someone that has a large soil bank. And on top of that, they need to have the right soil, because it's not that all soils could theoretically work, but some work better than others.

And the ones that work better, when I mean they work better, is that they generally use less cement to stabilize. So you generally want to find the optimal soil that can, like if you find like the holy gray, the creme de la creme of soils, you might not even need to put cement in it because it's strong and it has all the qualities as it that it needs on its own. Gotcha. Gotcha. And how about have you have you taken a deep dive into the history of the different ways people have used these biomaterials? Because you know, when building in throughout the centuries, people used what was there. Right. So it was through, you know, mass production. that we kind of got away from that and built things cheaper and move things by steam and rail and whatever. We standardize. It's kind of, and that's kind of where the materials create the form, that the only reason or the reason that most houses in the U.S.

ended up looking the same is because we standardized two by fours and all these building materials that made them way cheaper because that was the only way that America could expand at the rate it did after World War II. but it also limited the potential of ideas of forms you could create because you want to work with what's, you know? And also now it's like if I'm going to build a house and I'm buying a piece of wood that's eight foot long, I'm not going to make something that's nine feet long or I'm not going to do something that's seven feet long because that will create one foot of waste. So you want to, but it ends up creating forms that look very similar, which that's kind of where 3D printing and can and like so right. now and I was actually in the workshop I gave yesterday we've always had

bio materials like even building with Earth they weren't called biomaterials they were just called materials back then when when I talk about biomaterials I think when just and it's more of just to keep it like semantics to kind of like separate history is that biomaterials on one end they'll use agricultural ways that is generally like industrially produced agricultural waste or they'll use some form of new technology to process them so like the seaweed lamps, if it wasn't for a heat press, wouldn't be able to do it, you know? The beer waste, if it wasn't for blenders, it would be really hard to achieve that in manual

term. You could do it, but it would be so much manual labor that it wouldn't make sense. And then on top of that, when you look at mushroom materials or living materials, that's kind of when you're working with like algae, fungi, bacteria. That's kind of that you're creating like a lab and growing these materials into their final form. Like the holy grail of biomaterials or bio architecture would be that a tree would grow into a house. You know, you would either synthetically program the genetic code of a tree or find a way of using like humidity and temperature. Just how like you'll see a tree that is facing is completely horizontal because the wind was hitting it that way. That is a form of like environmental controlling.

So if you did that in a controlled scale, which now because of this, data, like that's kind of one of things I did in university. Because now we have so much climatic data of kind of humidity levels, temperatures, etc. You can be back in the day if I wanted to, let's say, build you a house in the middle of Baja or whatever, and you want it to be like, oh, I want to optimize passive ventilation, sun, et cetera. I would probably need to observe that house very detailed for a year to understand how everything moves.

But now with climatic data, you have that. data and you can simulate it. And you can be like, oh, what is this house going to look like in June 6th at 1132 p.m., which is really cool because going into design, just how the Egyptians built stuff that during the solstice, the light would hit a certain way. Now we can actually do that a way easier because you can simulate it. Right. But yeah, so that's kind of where I am. It's like on one end is we're looking into vernacular building techniques that have been around for millennia and using computational power and computational tools to re-discover them and reinterpret them in ways that before either through a lack of data, lack of whatever, to kind of take them to the

next level. So that's kind of where I'm very excited in the times we're living in. All right. Well, I think we're going to leave it right there. But where's the best place for folks to get a peek at what you're doing? You can come to Vallo de Guadalupe, come to Baja. You can find me on Instagram at Casa, as in house, C-A-S-A. I call it a bottom dash, but I think the... Underscore. Tamarindo, T-A-M-A-R-I-N-D-O.

Casa Tamarindo on Instagram. And I will say, I'll say in a quick caveat. An underscore in between. It'll be in the show notes. Underscore. The reason is called Casa Tamarindo. Aside from my name being Itamar. and tamarindo is because tamarindo is, most people don't know this,

but when the Arabs came to India, they saw the tamarind tree, and they thought like, oh, hey, it looks like a date. A date in Hebrew or Arabic is Tamar, which is what my name means, island of dates. But when they got there, they're like, oh, it looks like a date. So it's like the tamar, the Hindu, the Indian date. But then, fast forward hundreds of events. years, the tamarind comes to Mexico and it becomes a staple of our culture. You know, it's an

identity. And what I love about it is that it's this one thing that is so local of our culture, yet so global. So, yeah, which is kind of what I try to do. All right. Well, Frank's getting squirmary. We're going to call it right. We're going to call it right there. Ita. Thank you so much. Thank you. What a delight. What a delight to have you on Slow Baja today. Thank you. All right. We did it. I hope you like that. podcast, that conversation, Eta's a really interesting cat, and I don't say that lightly. He is really interesting for paths across again soon.

He's in the Valle de Guadalupe, and last I saw, he's got a little vegetarian taco stand going that he is running. So, Iita, thanks for spending some time with Slow Baja. All right, well, if you like what I'm doing, I'm trying to do it a lot more, and I'm in search of a podcast producer. that slot is open. Sam has been filling in and thanks Sam for coming back around and getting these shows out. But if you've got the skills, audio, visual, want to be part of the Slow Baja World, shoot me a DM. I really need to ramp up the shows. I've got some shows that I'm recording and some shows that are in the can, as they say, and need to get them out. It's been very difficult to get those shows out without a regular producer. So if you've got the skills and you want to be part of the Slow Baja world, shoot me a DM through SlowBaha.com.

And while you're over there, you can drop a taco in the tank. You can go to the store. There's some new shirts, some new hats. Stickers are still in stock. So drop a taco in the tank. Get that. Ask your doctor if Baja is right for you. Sticker.

That's the only way you can get it. And support this show in year 6, 170 plus episodes. All right, well, I'm going to tell you about my friend Mary McGee. I was thinking about her last night talking to Matt from Red Line Land Cruises. Matt used to race a Porsche RSK and an RS60. And Mary did too. And I was thinking about Mary McGee, you know, because she had a friend, Steve McQueen, who loved Baja and got Mary going down to Baja.

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