Julia Watson: Lo—TEK, Form Follows Flux | Technology for a Sustainable Tomorrow Lecture
Join us for a presentation by landscape designer Julia Watson, a leading expert in Indigenous and nature-based technologies and founder of Lo—TEK Institute and the Lo—TEK Office for Intercultural Urbanism. In this lecture, part of the College of Environmental Design’s Technology for a Sustainable Tomorrow series, Watson explores how Indigenous innovation offers resilient, regenerative, and technologically sophisticated models for design in a climate-altered world. She presents research on ancestral technologies and living systems, including water-based agricultural infrastructures in Southeast Asia and forest island settlements in the Amazon.
About the Speaker
Julia Watson is a landscape designer, author, and educator recognized by Wallpaper as one of the Top 300 Creatives Shaping America in 2023 and 2024. A leading expert in Indigenous and nature-based technologies, she is the author of Lo—TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism (TASCHEN) and the forthcoming Lo—TEK Water (TASCHEN). Trained in landscape architecture at Harvard, she’s taught at Columbia, Harvard, and RISD. Watson co-founded the Lo—TEK Institute, which promotes Indigenous science-based climate literacy, and the Lo—TEK Office for Intercultural Urbanism, an Indigenous and non-Indigenous design collective guided by a majority-Indigenous global advisory circle. Through Lo—TEK, Watson advocates for design in partnership with nature, and for an expanded definition of technology that is not extractive and static, but reciprocal and adaptive. Working at the intersection of landscape, infrastructure, culture, and design, she connects cultural knowledge, ecological intelligence, and contemporary challenges in the built environment.
About the Series
This presentation is part of the College of Environmental Design’s interdisciplinary fall lecture series, Technology for a Sustainable Tomorrow, which explores the role of technology in shaping our landscapes and cities, past and present. Technological innovations of the past 150 years — especially “advances” in transportation, construction, and energy — powered rapid urban growth, economic expansion, and new forms of convenience but also accelerated the climate crisis, degraded our landscapes, and compromised our health and well-being. We’ve invited speakers to critically assess the compelling opportunities, as well as the potential downsides, of generative AI and other new technologies that are increasingly becoming part of our design and research practices. Can the technologies of the 21st century help repair the damage and put us on a path to a healthier, more sustainable future — can technology fix what technology broke?
If you require accommodations to fully participate in this event, please contact Christina Hausle at least 10 days prior to the event.