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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.
La Luna Music Festival Masterplan & Stage Design at Knock Down Center in Brooklyn, New York
Date: 2019
Location: Knockdown Center, BK
Project Team: Julia Watson
Client: Matte Projects
Julia was the lead designer for the layout and the stages of the La Luna Music Festival held at the Knock Down Center.
The design for the experience was inspired by the ancient Mayan pilgrimage to the temple of Teotihuacan, which is famous for its Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun. A pilgrimage in itself, the La Luna Festival which takes over the space of the old glass factory, took the obstacles of the site that included stairs, platforms, passageways and vast spaces, as opportunities that were reminiscent of a mesoamerican ceremonial site.
La Luna Dance Festival is a summer daytime-nighttime celebration of electronic music. In light of the diurnal experience, the site was designed to celebrate the mystical energy of the sun and the moon as a ceremony of music and dance, in the same way people have done for thousands of years. Inspired by the culture of ancient sites to the Sixties club, the master plan, stage and room design, achieved a space for maximum danceability, which included the Sun Stage with a 6 foot hanging disco ball, the moon stage as a tiered ziggurat temple and the Red Room as a unique experience of the god who inhabits the interior of the temple.
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