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.
Collapse: Climate, Cities & Culture
at Global Design NYC Exhibition, New York
Date: 2018
Location: New York, NY
Project Team: Julia Watson + Jane Chongsuwat + Despo Thoma + Despina Linarki + Brittany Roy
Client: NYU Gallatin
The exhibition focuses on the design community's response to environmental extremes. Studio REDE's contribution will feature models and visual graphics under the title "Extinction Ancient Innovations."
‘Extinction of Ancient Innovations’ presents an alternative to the cultural artifacts typically displayed in museums. The cabinet of curiosities exhibits miniature reconstructions of indigenous innovations like the Living Bridges of the Khasis of India; the Rice Terraces of the Subak of Bali; and the floating islands of the Uros of Peru and the Ma’dan of Southern Iraq. These technologies reframe the people of the Fourth World as innovative, rather than primitive, designed in response to environmental crises such as famine, flood, drought, storm, lack of territory or arable terrain. Borne out of scarcity, they’re sustainable, adaptable, resilient and symbiotic with natural systems with more featured in a forthcoming book titled, ‘Ancient Innovations: From the Fourth to the First World’.