Designer, activist, academic,
and author of Lo—TEK,
Design by Radical Indigenism.
A leading expert of Lo—TEK nature-based technologies for climate-resilience.
Her eponymously named studio brings creative and conceptual, interdisciplinary thinking to urban projects and corporate clients interested in systemic and sustainable change. Julia regularly teaches urban design at Harvard and Columbia University.
Venice Architecture Biennale 2021
Italian Pavilion Resilient Communities
Date: May-November 2021
Location: Venice, Italy
Project Team: Curated by Alessandro Melis
Client: Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of Italy’s Ministry of Culture
Resilient Communities Italian Pavilion 2021 exhibited the issue of climate change and the significant challenges that architecture is called on to face.
Titled Resilient Communities, the exhibition explored ideas for improving the built environment and addressing climate change, and was divided into two themes: urban resiliency and future perspectives. Melis focused on the experiences of marginal communities that could be a positive model for rethinking ways out of the environmental crisis. He also aimed to raise awareness of the potential and criticisms that could lead to a revision of the discipline.
Julia Watson collaborated on the production of the Italian Pavilion by contributing a video piece speaking to the subject of the newly published theory of Lo–TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism. The exhibition highlighted how climate change challenges the resilience of urban, productive, and agricultural systems. The project, promoted by the Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity of Italy’s Ministry of Culture, is based on the belief that architecture must significantly contribute to the improvement of the quality of life and health, providing adequate responses to the epochal environmental and social changes we are facing today. Footage from Julia's lecture on Traditional Ecological Knowledge was displayed within an installation in the exhibit.
