Modern society has developed around overly complicated technologies that, in
many instances, fight against nature rather than work with it. Now, a new book
illustrates the ease with which indigenous peoples learned to live in symbiosis
with nature — creating intuitive, timeless solutions that we can still benefit
from today.
Author Julia Watson — an environmentalist, academic and designer of
urban, indigenous and spiritual landscapes — teaches Urban Design at Harvard
and Columbia University. Raised in Australia by European immigrant parents,
Watson developed a heightened awareness of the clash between colonialism and
native cultures — the former ignoring local wisdom and indigenous innovation,
deeming them primitive.
Now, as more and more designers and planners are recognizing the urgency of
reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, they are realizing the
virtues and benefits of working with nature and the endless inspiration for
innovation contained within the natural world — and have begun working to
disrupt technological systems that exploit nature.
Watson coined the term “Lo—TEK” — derived from Traditional Ecological
Knowledge — to play off the idea of low-tech elements in architecture. This
book presents 120 living examples of indigenous technologies in practice — a
mere snapshot of multigenerational knowledge, practices and beliefs that counter
the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive; rather, it is sophisticated
and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems. Lo—TEK serves as a
reference for new and established designers alike who are interested in
redesigning our modern world to ensure a climate-resilient future.
:youtube https://youtu.be/mevjWNnFULA
Divided into four sections spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts and Wetlands,
the book explores thousands of years of ingenuity from places including
Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq,
India and Indonesia.
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Hear how Mars and its Ben's Original brand are working with Delta Harvest to greatly reduce water use in rice cultivation while improving crop yields, at the SB Regenerative Ag Summit — Thursday, Oct. 17, at SB'24 San Diego.
As Watson told Dezeen in a recent
interview,
the technologies showcased in the book illustrate that tribal communities are
highly advanced when it comes to creating systems in symbiosis with the natural
world:
"There are so many examples. … They have increased biodiversity, they're
producing food, they're flood mitigating, they're resilient in terms of
foreshore conditions, they're cleaning water, they're carbon sequestering. They
have all of the natural qualities that we're really interested in, in terms of
ecosystem services, but they're completely constructed by man." — Julia Watson
Read more about Lo—TEK design …
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Sustainable Brands Staff
Published Mar 4, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET