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Lo–Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism
Three hundred years ago, intellectuals of the European Enlightenment constructed a mythology of technology. Influenced by a confluence of humanism, colonialism, and racism, this mythology ignored local wisdom and indigenous innovation, deeming it primitive. Today, we have slowly come to realize that the legacy of this mythology is haunting us.
Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.Lo―TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.
With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 20 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.
Designers understand the urgency of reducing humanity’s negative environmental impact, yet perpetuate the same mythology of technology that relies on exploiting nature. Responding to climate change by building hard infrastructures and favoring high-tech homogenous design, we are ignoring millennia-old knowledge of how to live in symbiosis with nature. Without implementing soft systems that use biodiversity as a building block, designs remain inherently unsustainable.Lo―TEK, derived from Traditional Ecological Knowledge, is a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs, countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology. It is sophisticated and designed to sustainably work with complex ecosystems.
With a foreword by anthropologist Wade Davis and four chapters spanning Mountains, Forests, Deserts, and Wetlands, this book explores thousands of years of human wisdom and ingenuity from 20 countries including Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Kenya, Iran, Iraq, India, and Indonesia. We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.
420 pages, Hardcover
First published December 13, 2019
About the author
Julia Watson
1 book11 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Born in Australia but based in New York, Julia is leading the field in search of Lo—TEK indigenous, nature-based technologies for climate-resilient design. She teaches urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Born in Australia but based in New York, Julia is leading the field in search of Lo—TEK indigenous, nature-based technologies for climate-resilient design. She teaches urban design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and at Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
January 1, 2021
Is it a technical architectural/agricultural book? A work of academic anthropology?
A coffee table book? A polemical zine?
It's all of these, without committing to any one genre in particular. I'm going to go ahead and say that it's primarily a Vibe Book, and on the level it definitely succeeds.
Some things it accomplishes or communicates well:
* It just looks freaking cool (visually-striking art and photography, helpful diagrams, playful-but-still-readable typesetting and layout choices, etc)
* Documents the substantial harms of the conservationist mindset across the world, in how it obstructs and villainizes sustainable indigenous practices
* Treats the indigenous cultures it profiles with respect and curiosity rather than just mining them for their best ideas or for pity in documenting their plight in the face of modern industrial incursions
* Illustrates over and over again the false binary of "stewardship" and "exploitation". It's easy to be skeptical of the idea that altering the landscape in a way that provides for human needs could also serve to increase native biodiversity and restore habitat (in no small part because it's so often used towards the ends of dishonest green-washing by the likes of timber companies), but Lo-TEK makes it vivid and irrefutable.
So there was potential here for it to be a 5 star book, and I do think there's a 5 star book buried in the real book somewhere. But for all the lavish attention to detail paid to its visual design, the writing is... astonishingly bad. Audaciously bad, even, given the book's pricetag and the primary author's academic pedigree.
Bland; stilted; careless; fluffy; repetitive; evasive; pat...
Writing so bad it could take as its subject matter something as rich and under-documented as "indigenous design", and then render it almost unreadable except in ≤ 20 minute bursts.
Entire academese-clogged paragraphs go by sometimes without imparting a single nugget of content that isn't either tautological, regurgitating some terms and proper nouns that'll never be followed up on, or just restating vague assertions and value judgements from elsewhere in the chapter.
In its weakest stretches, you feel like you're reading an undergrad midterm paper frantically jerry-built the morning of, with one eye permanently glued to the word count indicator, by a student who attended the lectures but only skimmed the assigned readings.
As exasperating as the filler can be, at least it has the virtue of being easily parsed as you scan ahead and find where the thread picks up again; better at least than the parts so incoherent it completely derails your brain faster than it can register as skippable.
As an example, try out this sentence from chapter 2 -
You can't. It's like a linguistic version of the "Name One Thing In This Photo" meme. The "copyediting"/"proofreading" firms in the credits deserve to be sued for malpractice. There's a shoddiness to the text on a sentence-by-sentence level that's totally incongruous with the painstakingly sumptuous presentation.
Now, if Lo-TEK positioned itself as a humble coffee table book and visual reference, then hauling out the junk text and straightening out what's left would leave the reader with a satisfying, well-contained package. But Lo-TEK insists on also being taken seriously as An Urgent Manifesto and viable roadmap for action, and I just don't think there's any amount of editorial magic that could elevate it to the level of rigor that type of project demands.
Not that I pretend I'm qualified to weigh in on whether these kinds of Lo-TEK solutions could feasibly scale to support all ~8 billion people on the planet today. In fact, I almost think it'd be counterproductive - if you accept that the current system is fundamentally unsustainable, then all that needs to be demonstrated is that they can and should be more widely implemented than they are now. Instead, what strikes me as the fatal flaw in the specific way this book frame its thesis is this:
Lo-TEK conceives of designs as being inextricable from their designers' culturally-binding myths, while at the same time reveling in the idiosyncratic indigenous mythologies that "produced" the very designs it holds up as models for us to learn from.
If sustainable designs really do need grounding in "sustainable" myths in some tangible, material way – as opposed to a whimsically speculative thinky-winky way – how do we get there from where we are now? And if not, why distract from the engineering and ecological principles that make the indigenous case-studies worthy of emulation by emphasizing all the inessential, culturally-specific superstitions attached to them? Maybe it's unfair to characterize the book as asserting that the only way forward is to purge our collective cultural memory of things like scientific skepticism and monotheistic human chauvinism, then install a mythology manufactured to be more compatible with species symbiosis in their place... but it doesn't take any pains to steer the reader towards a more substantial/nuanced/pragmatic reading either.
In the end, it all feels somehow of a piece though with the unmistakeable, unwavering Vibe of the book - its particular way of being overstuffed and starry-eyed is both its charm and its downfall. I don't know.
* I learned a lot.
* I think we need to collectively engage with its ideas.
* I'll probably place it somewhere where people are likely to flip through it. Just... hesitate before loaning it to be read cover to cover.
A coffee table book? A polemical zine?
It's all of these, without committing to any one genre in particular. I'm going to go ahead and say that it's primarily a Vibe Book, and on the level it definitely succeeds.
Some things it accomplishes or communicates well:
* It just looks freaking cool (visually-striking art and photography, helpful diagrams, playful-but-still-readable typesetting and layout choices, etc)
* Documents the substantial harms of the conservationist mindset across the world, in how it obstructs and villainizes sustainable indigenous practices
* Treats the indigenous cultures it profiles with respect and curiosity rather than just mining them for their best ideas or for pity in documenting their plight in the face of modern industrial incursions
* Illustrates over and over again the false binary of "stewardship" and "exploitation". It's easy to be skeptical of the idea that altering the landscape in a way that provides for human needs could also serve to increase native biodiversity and restore habitat (in no small part because it's so often used towards the ends of dishonest green-washing by the likes of timber companies), but Lo-TEK makes it vivid and irrefutable.
So there was potential here for it to be a 5 star book, and I do think there's a 5 star book buried in the real book somewhere. But for all the lavish attention to detail paid to its visual design, the writing is... astonishingly bad. Audaciously bad, even, given the book's pricetag and the primary author's academic pedigree.
Bland; stilted; careless; fluffy; repetitive; evasive; pat...
Writing so bad it could take as its subject matter something as rich and under-documented as "indigenous design", and then render it almost unreadable except in ≤ 20 minute bursts.
Entire academese-clogged paragraphs go by sometimes without imparting a single nugget of content that isn't either tautological, regurgitating some terms and proper nouns that'll never be followed up on, or just restating vague assertions and value judgements from elsewhere in the chapter.
In its weakest stretches, you feel like you're reading an undergrad midterm paper frantically jerry-built the morning of, with one eye permanently glued to the word count indicator, by a student who attended the lectures but only skimmed the assigned readings.
As exasperating as the filler can be, at least it has the virtue of being easily parsed as you scan ahead and find where the thread picks up again; better at least than the parts so incoherent it completely derails your brain faster than it can register as skippable.
As an example, try out this sentence from chapter 2 -
Now read it again, and try to answer even the most basic questions about its content - what is acting, what is being acted on, and how."By working with nature's innate intelligence, this indigenous innovation has evolved sophisticated and resilient water-based infrastructures."
You can't. It's like a linguistic version of the "Name One Thing In This Photo" meme. The "copyediting"/"proofreading" firms in the credits deserve to be sued for malpractice. There's a shoddiness to the text on a sentence-by-sentence level that's totally incongruous with the painstakingly sumptuous presentation.
Now, if Lo-TEK positioned itself as a humble coffee table book and visual reference, then hauling out the junk text and straightening out what's left would leave the reader with a satisfying, well-contained package. But Lo-TEK insists on also being taken seriously as An Urgent Manifesto and viable roadmap for action, and I just don't think there's any amount of editorial magic that could elevate it to the level of rigor that type of project demands.
Not that I pretend I'm qualified to weigh in on whether these kinds of Lo-TEK solutions could feasibly scale to support all ~8 billion people on the planet today. In fact, I almost think it'd be counterproductive - if you accept that the current system is fundamentally unsustainable, then all that needs to be demonstrated is that they can and should be more widely implemented than they are now. Instead, what strikes me as the fatal flaw in the specific way this book frame its thesis is this:
Lo-TEK conceives of designs as being inextricable from their designers' culturally-binding myths, while at the same time reveling in the idiosyncratic indigenous mythologies that "produced" the very designs it holds up as models for us to learn from.
If sustainable designs really do need grounding in "sustainable" myths in some tangible, material way – as opposed to a whimsically speculative thinky-winky way – how do we get there from where we are now? And if not, why distract from the engineering and ecological principles that make the indigenous case-studies worthy of emulation by emphasizing all the inessential, culturally-specific superstitions attached to them? Maybe it's unfair to characterize the book as asserting that the only way forward is to purge our collective cultural memory of things like scientific skepticism and monotheistic human chauvinism, then install a mythology manufactured to be more compatible with species symbiosis in their place... but it doesn't take any pains to steer the reader towards a more substantial/nuanced/pragmatic reading either.
In the end, it all feels somehow of a piece though with the unmistakeable, unwavering Vibe of the book - its particular way of being overstuffed and starry-eyed is both its charm and its downfall. I don't know.
* I learned a lot.
* I think we need to collectively engage with its ideas.
* I'll probably place it somewhere where people are likely to flip through it. Just... hesitate before loaning it to be read cover to cover.
January 22, 2021
No doubt a valuable (and beautifully designed) book for imagining and learning about indigenous technologies across the globe. I appreciated the descriptions of connections between spiritual, cultural and ecological traditions, and how together humans have created sustainable, symbiotic systems with nature. Though Watson rightly criticizes modern conservation's worship of "wilderness" and "saving nature", there was a subtle sentiment was that we still need to "save indigenous people" and "take their climate resilient technologies" back to the U.S. (yay neocolonialism) as opposed to support, lift up and fight for indigenous sovereignty and fundamentally change the U.S. worldview. Her writing was also pretty bad, and very academic. The most interesting parts of the book were the interviews with the tired change-makers in the communities that worked between indigenous people's needs and the modern world.
All in all, glad I read the book. It's clear Watson is trying to do right, but is coming from a stilted American-academic worldview.
All in all, glad I read the book. It's clear Watson is trying to do right, but is coming from a stilted American-academic worldview.
November 21, 2020
deep glance into humanity' brains.
found the roots of everything that amazes me.
'we cannot find solutions to the problems we face with the same ideology from which those problems emerged.
our global survival is dependent upon our thinking shifting from 'survival of the fittest' to 'survival of the most symbiotic'
ironically, many contemporary green technologies (...) have been around for thousands of years, being rediscovered only when packaged as new.
rooting our very relationship with nature from superior to symbiotic'
Fy homo economicus. Keep singing to baby rice.
found the roots of everything that amazes me.
'we cannot find solutions to the problems we face with the same ideology from which those problems emerged.
our global survival is dependent upon our thinking shifting from 'survival of the fittest' to 'survival of the most symbiotic'
ironically, many contemporary green technologies (...) have been around for thousands of years, being rediscovered only when packaged as new.
rooting our very relationship with nature from superior to symbiotic'
Fy homo economicus. Keep singing to baby rice.
August 19, 2024
A beautiful but conflicted book. In creating Lo-TEK as using traditional ecological knowledge as an approach for designing, Watson claims it as her own. The writing feels extractive, as though she hasn’t really built relationships with the indigenous people she writes about, instead claiming the knowledge as her own. It reads like a textbook (literally, because of the definitions and organization), and is way too impersonal where she could focus more on history and spirituality of the indigenous peoples, and get more personal.
Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful book with amazing illustrations and photographs, although the drawings are architecturalized to the point where many are unnecessary and sterilize the “nature” she writes about. TEK is vital to surviving as a species and succeeding as designers, but Lo-TEK comes off as insensitive, impersonal, and academic, even if it’s contents are astounding.
Nonetheless, it’s a beautiful book with amazing illustrations and photographs, although the drawings are architecturalized to the point where many are unnecessary and sterilize the “nature” she writes about. TEK is vital to surviving as a species and succeeding as designers, but Lo-TEK comes off as insensitive, impersonal, and academic, even if it’s contents are astounding.
March 4, 2021
Best book so far this year!
Julia Watson takes the reader through the Americas, Africa, Asia, And the Middle East where she shines a light on the sustainable Technologies that have been in use by indigenous people for centuries. Close your eyes and imagine crops that don’t need pesticides, floating houses, living bridges, and farms that grow paradises. Such notions are not fantasies but real places built by real people….and they are slowly being killed by Rupert Murdoch’s closest friends.
What I find so refreshing about this book is that it positions humans as “a part of” rather than “an enemy” of nature. Ecological degradation is less an inherent part of humanity but more the result of a cultural mindset that seeks dominance over symbiosis. I have noted that previous books relating to environmental issues often commit the sin of lumping the global south in with the global north when the conversation turns to carrying capacity and ecological destruction. Watson notes that this is the very mindset that prompted the expulsion of Native Americans from the United States natural parks system.
The modern western ecological mindset positions all humanity as destructive to nature, ignoring the fact that it is not so much people that are a danger to nature but “the west” itself. Watson documents how our planet’s original cultures integrated themselves with their natural systems and how their disappearance will fuel further ecological instability. It is my hope that more works such as this will prompt us to safeguard the people who live sustainably as their methods are clean, affordable, and beautiful. Moreover I hope this book can prompt the beginning of a broader lifestyle shift where a slower, less consumer-based existence is the norm.
The earth will not be saved by shopping. In fact, we must destroy shopping.
Land back.
Julia Watson takes the reader through the Americas, Africa, Asia, And the Middle East where she shines a light on the sustainable Technologies that have been in use by indigenous people for centuries. Close your eyes and imagine crops that don’t need pesticides, floating houses, living bridges, and farms that grow paradises. Such notions are not fantasies but real places built by real people….and they are slowly being killed by Rupert Murdoch’s closest friends.
What I find so refreshing about this book is that it positions humans as “a part of” rather than “an enemy” of nature. Ecological degradation is less an inherent part of humanity but more the result of a cultural mindset that seeks dominance over symbiosis. I have noted that previous books relating to environmental issues often commit the sin of lumping the global south in with the global north when the conversation turns to carrying capacity and ecological destruction. Watson notes that this is the very mindset that prompted the expulsion of Native Americans from the United States natural parks system.
The modern western ecological mindset positions all humanity as destructive to nature, ignoring the fact that it is not so much people that are a danger to nature but “the west” itself. Watson documents how our planet’s original cultures integrated themselves with their natural systems and how their disappearance will fuel further ecological instability. It is my hope that more works such as this will prompt us to safeguard the people who live sustainably as their methods are clean, affordable, and beautiful. Moreover I hope this book can prompt the beginning of a broader lifestyle shift where a slower, less consumer-based existence is the norm.
The earth will not be saved by shopping. In fact, we must destroy shopping.
Land back.
January 27, 2020
Super cool book, case studies of indigenous solutions and innovations using local materials, and all the while enriching biodiversity. Great photos and well designed schematics of how each example of TEK works. Traditional ecological knowledge rules!
March 5, 2020
The design and binding of book are very well done, although some of the small print strained my eyes. There were a few copy-editing errors that were slightly distracting. Overall, I enjoyed the book and learned much about some of the inventive indigenous design of dwellings and farming systems that I had not known about prior to reading this book. Lo (local)- TEK (traditional ecological knowledge).
June 9, 2023
Took a long journey for me to finish this book, but could have finished it within a week. The dense information certainly did not lack in research. The formatting and the diagrams also helped a lot in understanding how these systems worked.
Personally, it was a good read. It is a designer manifesto in protecting these dying traditional practices and I'm very glad someone took the time to record it into a publication.
Personally, it was a good read. It is a designer manifesto in protecting these dying traditional practices and I'm very glad someone took the time to record it into a publication.
January 16, 2021
Beautifully designed and it should be a fascinating topic, but the writing is terrible. I’m not even sure who the intended audience is because it’s too generic for professionals and frankly boring for everyone else. It feels like each section was written by a different assistant and just thrown together without editing. Unfortunate.
February 12, 2022
A beautiful book that begins to catalogue a collection of under-appreciated ecological innovations developed by indigenous cultures around the world.
Watson examines people and their adaptations to mountain, forest, desert and wetland environments. The author does a good job of balancing a reverence for these systems and the cultures that produced them, while acknowledging the pressures and threats modern industrial/post-industrial civilizations pose.
Inspiring research important both from an environmental and cultural perspective. Would love to see more scholarship in this vein, particularly in northern environments. Also appreciate the semi-optimistic note it ends; acknowledging the ubiquity of human impact in the Anthropocene but conceding that not all human interactions with the environment are inherently destructive and can in fact be mutually beneficial as is the case with many of the groups examined.
All that said probably best approached in bite sized portions, reading it straight through was a bit of a slog.
Watson examines people and their adaptations to mountain, forest, desert and wetland environments. The author does a good job of balancing a reverence for these systems and the cultures that produced them, while acknowledging the pressures and threats modern industrial/post-industrial civilizations pose.
Inspiring research important both from an environmental and cultural perspective. Would love to see more scholarship in this vein, particularly in northern environments. Also appreciate the semi-optimistic note it ends; acknowledging the ubiquity of human impact in the Anthropocene but conceding that not all human interactions with the environment are inherently destructive and can in fact be mutually beneficial as is the case with many of the groups examined.
All that said probably best approached in bite sized portions, reading it straight through was a bit of a slog.
October 27, 2020
Hard to rate, because it's half-way between a textbook and a coffee table book. The artsy pages didn't do a lot for me, but I definitely enjoyed the insights into the architecture of so many different cultures.
Trivial: the margin definitions were at times bizarre. Who would be reading a book like this and find words like "mythology" confusing?
Trivial: the margin definitions were at times bizarre. Who would be reading a book like this and find words like "mythology" confusing?
January 11, 2022
The breadth of Indigenous knowledge presented in this book is really diverse, especially for a newbie to the subject.
For the book design nerds: However not a fan of the low tech physical book design is really flimsy and not a good example of what LO-TEK is trying to argue because it should still work, even if simple.
For the book design nerds: However not a fan of the low tech physical book design is really flimsy and not a good example of what LO-TEK is trying to argue because it should still work, even if simple.
May 13, 2022
Such a cool book! If you’re interested in the environment, how to build things, agriculture etc then definitely read it. That said, it’s not exactly a cover-to-cover read. More like a reference book to pick up and put down and then pick up again a few weeks or months later. I also loved the binding and cover—you can see the way it’s sewn, which is surely by design.
Read
November 13, 2020this book was very much my vibe though i hoped for something a little more in the vein of low tech magazine which attempts to speculate about how our current society could begin to reincorporate these historic practices in a sustainable future
January 11, 2021
This book is incredible! I actually can't stop talking about it to everyone. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to find out more about the incredible ways humans have adapted their environment, and about how indigenous cultures are the key to saving the planet.
April 30, 2020
Diverse sourcing, thoroughly researched, beautifully composed
September 6, 2020
Hermoso y repleto de información.
Es un libro que, antes que bonito,es útil para estar al día de algunas de als cosas mas interesantes que se están llevando a cabo alrededor del mundo.
Es un libro que, antes que bonito,es útil para estar al día de algunas de als cosas mas interesantes que se están llevando a cabo alrededor del mundo.
April 14, 2022
My favorite guide to highly localized engineering
Read
December 6, 2023it’s not really something you read all the way through. i shall return to this as a reference book
January 19, 2021
pretty pictures, but really inaccurate and harmful language used to depict Indigenous global populations
August 30, 2020
though the topic is interesting, the text quality is mediocre. it seems like no one edited the content, as it is repetitive and there are quite a few spelling errors. also, the images are few and disappointing:(
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews