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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.
As a leading expert on traditional nature based innovations, Julia Watson offers innovative interdisciplinary thinking to clients with big questions.
Founded in New York in 2014, Julia Watson is a landscape research, design and consulting studio that experiments at the intersection of culture, ecology, and technology. The studio specializes in the design and implementation of systemic change for the sustainability, innovation, futures sectors. With our unique expertise, the studio collaborates with architects, designers, local communities, global conservationists, corporations, and governments.
Trained in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design, studio principal Julia Watson is an award-winning designer and educator, a best-selling author, a TED speaker, and a leading expert on Indigenous nature based technologies.
In her 2019 monograph, Lo–TEK Design by Radical Indigenism published by TASCHEN, Watson coined the term Lo–TEK—derived from local and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), which is the cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs. Lo—TEK Water—the upcoming sequel—explores water-responsive, generational infrastructures. Co-authored with Indigenous experts, it examines water-related technologies and contemporary projects that integrate Indigenous wisdom to promote climate resilience.
Spearheaded by Watson’s seminal TED talk, “How to Build a Resilient Future Using Ancient Wisdom,” the Lo—TEK “Ancestral Futures” initiative encompasses two groundbreaking books, a comprehensive curriculum, an Indigenous intellectual property innovation, a knowledge sharing platform, commissions at national museums, an Indigenous artists residency, a design competition for students, expert lectures, and landscape design and consulting projects.
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