How Ancient Technologies Can Show Us the Way to More Sustainable Building
We present four case studies on more viable ways of living in mountains, forests, wetlands, and deserts.
We present four case studies on more viable ways of living in mountains, forests, wetlands, and deserts.
As the world faces an unprecedented environmental crisis, our cities must implement innovative, sustainable solutions to survive. But what if the forward-thinking fixes we need lie not in new technologies but in something older?
"We commonly think of sustainability as bringing plants and trees onto buildings, but what if our most sustainable innovations were rooted in cultures that figured it out a millennia ago?" asks Julia Watson, author of Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism. "There are hundreds of nature-based technologies that need to be considered as potential climate-resilient infrastructures. It is possible to weave ancient knowledge of how to live symbiotically with nature into how we shape the cities of the future before this wisdom is lost forever."
Here we present four case studies, taken from Watson’s book, that show how native peoples in mountains, forests, wetlands, and deserts have developed sustainable approaches to living. We also examine how they could be applied to challenges we face today.
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. Publisher: Taschen Photo Courtesy of Taschen
Mountain
Jingkieng Dieng Jri Living Root Bridges
The Khasi people of northeast India cultivate living-root bridges to travel between villages during monsoon season. Their homelands experience some of the highest levels of precipitation on earth. Watson proposes that living bridges such as these could be used to reduce the urban heat-island effect by providing canopy cover over city streets. In cities where flooding due to sea level rise is inevitable, they could even retain their original use.
A young fisherman walks under a living root bridge at Mawlynnong village, India. In the relentless damp of Meghalaya’s jungles the Khasi people have used the trainable roots of rubber trees to grow Jingkieng Dieng Jri living root bridges over rivers for centuries.
Photo by Amos Chapple, courtesy of TASCHEN
Forest
Kihamba Forest Gardens
In the forests surrounding Mount Kilimanjaro, the Chagga people grow many varieties of bananas—alongside some 400 other plants—in forest gardens, human-shaped ecosystems that behave like natural forests (below). Some of these gardens are as large as Los Angeles and can take two and a half hours to drive through. In contrast to industrialized agriculture, in which clearcut logging is followed by monoculture farming, this ancient agricultural system simultaneously supports forest biodiversity and human population growth.
The kihamba agriculture cropping system at the base of Kilimanjaro is dominated by trees, banana and coffee plants.
Photo by Ulrich Doering, courtesy of TASCHEN
"The Chagga have figured out a way to retain the complexity of the natural rainforest but also integrate a really complex agroforestry system that is incredibly productive," says Watson. "This has made them one of the wealthiest communities in their region."
A farmers house and surrounding plantation located in the banana forest which covers an area similar in size to Los Angeles.
Photo by Ulrich Doering, courtesy of TASCHEN
See the full story on Dwell.com: How Ancient Technologies Can Show Us the Way to More Sustainable Building
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