Book Description Review “The result of more than 20 years of travelling to research the original smart settlements, through an architect’s lens.”“How can we live more sustainably? Indigenous groups have some ideas.”“Lo―TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism provides a blueprint for sustainable architecture in the 21st century.”“We rediscover an ancient mythology in a contemporary context, radicalizing the spirit of human nature.” Read more About the Author Academic and author Julia Watson is the Principal and Founder of Julia Watson Studio, an experiential, landscape, and urban design studio, as well as a Director and Co-Founder of ‘A Future Studio’, a collective of conscious designers with an ethos towards global ecological change. She teaches Urban Design at Harvard and Columbia University. After graduating from Harvard with the highest award for her work on conservation and spiritual landscapes, she has been published in Nakhara Journal, Water Urbanisms East, World Heritage Sites and Living Culture of Indonesia, and co-authored the Spiritual Guide to Bali’s UNESCO World Heritage with Dr. J. Stephen Lansing.Piera Wolf and Claudine Eriksson are W―E studio, a multidisciplinary creative studio based in Zürich and New York that strives to bridge time and space between these constantly evolving and contrasting cities. Piera and Claudine have individually been recognized by publications and organizations including The New York Times, Dazed Digital, Rolling Stone, Slanted, and many more. Talks, teaching, and workshop engagements include the New York School of Visual Arts, HTW Berlin, Google Creative Lab, and the Zürich University of the Arts. Read more Customers Review: Have you ever felt romantic for the agrarian life? A plow, a field, and seven wives and 50 kids to help do all the manual labor? What would you grow: rice, corn or maybe fish? This book helps put your whim-of-fancy into some practical perspective. By looking at multiple indiginous communities across four key habitats (mountains, flood valley, desserts, and lakes), Julia Watson illustrates the importance of these integrated systems by exploring the the way each of these communities work WITH their environments. On page 19 there is a wonderful flow chart of how individuals, community, culture, and world view are created as a result of working within a local system. This book takes the perspective of an anthropologist and looks broadly at how these communities have survived for millennials. However, I would like to be clear that this is NOT a how-to book. There are no steps on how to grow rice, or farm fish. There ARE diagrams of how cascading rice terraces work, and how floating islands can be made (and there’s more than one way to float an island). I found it amazing that many of these communities are being studied for their CHEMICAL-FREE pest management, and FERTILIZER-FREE high yield crops. This book actually got me thinking about my own plot of earth, and how I could harness the utility of some of the keystone species in my own yard. If that wasn’t enough, this book is gorgeous! From the side sitting binding, to the copper pallet, and the overall inclusiveness (this book is written in English, but includes multiple languages, one for each cultural interview), I feel a little more connected to humanity than I did before reading it. Buy this book and buy less plastic crap!
An impressive overview of highly sophisticated but low-tech cultural adaptions across the planet. The author has clearly communicated a variety of food, building, and material systems which have proven to be sustainable over millennia. The call for a reassessment of value and source of inspiration and reference within the professional design field is a refreshing and overdue response. Challenging many unquestioned sustainability approaches such as typical conservation projects is also important and appreciated. I was grateful to see the author mention conservation refugees and it’s heartening to see an architect root and extend their work in traditional ecological knowledge.As a book it’s not quite so brilliant – the binding if you can call it that is very fragile. The text is incredibly small and the page design would have benefited greatly from a variety of readers reviewing it. Much of the text is as small as liner notes in a CD – maybe point size 8? Makes my 20/15 vision feel terrible trying to read the captions. Book design conventions are the result of understanding a clear way to communicate information in this format – if you’re not improving on it why change it? Huge margins on some pages while some are so small you can’t avoid covering text with your fingers while awkward indenting on other pages leaves you wondering if you got a bad printing. The photos however are beautiful and most of the illustrations help communicate the design approaches being covered. Some of the illustrations detract from this. And the book suffers from a general sense of being overly concerned with its presentation and self-conscious. TThese critiques aside, it’s an incredibly valuable piece of anthropology with examples that today’s industrial world urgently needs.It’s a massive contribution to the world of sustainable and regenerative design and all those working in the fields of ecological restoration, permaculture, sustainable architecture and design, ecological engineering as well as those simply interested in the indigenous life way and design approaches around the world will find this to be a major contribution to their work. I’ll happily duck tape the spine together to keep this on hand as a reference for specific strategies as well as inspiration.
Impressive catalog of new (or very old) and exciting ways to think about architecture in our rapidly changing climate. Love the book and the accompanying images / graphics, Julia Watson truly brings you along on a dense journey.would also like to point out, that it’s not a manufacturing issue that the spine of the book is detached; that is its intended design
I ordered this book and the cover was not attached to either the spine or the front of the book in any way and only flimsily to the back. I returned the book, but it looked neat and I wanted to read it, so I accepted a replacement for the return, only to find that again the same problem occurred, but this time with additional page ( around and inclusive of pg 90) simple loose and unattached even by glue to any other pages. Amazon was originally an online BOOK company. Learn to make books. Sell only books that are, you know, books… The content may be profound, but it will never matter becuse it’s just a bunch of pages (not a cohesive book!) and won’t be durable enough to read.
Previous reviewers were evidently unaware that the brilliant design of this book allows the spine to open to reveal the construction of the book, and allow it to lie flat on a table so that the photographs and illustrations can be fully appreciated.
I want to say I love everything about this book. I couldn’t wait for it to arrive, it’s beautiful, well-witten and inspiring. However, the book smells like an old paint can. It’s very difficult to enjoy due to the smell. It’s a shame, because it is very good.
I also opened up the book and found the binding to have failed. I will look to use some hot glue sticks myself to bind it to the thick cover. The book content and the photos that accompany it are amazing and it’s an excellent book. |
10 reviews