Julia Watson, designer, activist, academic, and leading expert on Lo-TEK technologies for climate resilience, is fighting for new ways to shape our world.
Photography: Buro Happold
Since leaving Australia for New York more than twenty years ago, Julia Watson has built an innovative landscape design studio, taught at Harvard and Columbia, and written the stunningly beautiful, award-winning and groundbreaking book Lo-TEK. Design by Radical Indi-
genism. In her work she calls for a design that rethinks its perception of high-tech, incorporates indigenous techniques and is much more sustainable and local. We spoke to her about neocolonial design thinking, living materials – and the superpower of symbiosis.
Today, there is a growing interest in the sustainable practices of indigenous cultures. But you started your research almost twenty years ago. Is one of the reasons for this that you are from Australia?
Julia Watson: The precolonial history of Australia is very present but at the same time also very hidden and ignored. Just a few months ago, the majority of Australians voted no in a referendum about giving indigenous people a greater political voice. It’s not all sunny in Australia. But I went to an architecture school with a really advanced Aboriginal Research Center, where every student had to take a course about Aboriginal environments. And that course resonated incredibly with me. I was very interested in history, decolonization, mythology, and nature and at this point it all came together. I switched to landscape architecture and was very inquisitive how indigenous communities inhabited a landscape compared to non-indigenous people. So, I approached it more from a design point of view.
