The Subak rice terraces in Bali, Indonesia, represent some of the most biodiverse and productive farmlands in the world. They are one of the 18 case studies of indigenous design in a new book from Taschen. | Copyright: © David Lazar

A new book explores what we can learn from people who have mastered living with the land for millennia The rice terraces in Bali look almost otherworldly. For over a thousand years, local communities have cut into the sloping volcanic mountainsides in order to farm. What appear at first to be emerald-green steps in the landscape reveal a sophisticated irrigation system called subak that takes advantage of the natural watershed: Rains leach minerals from the volcanic soil and an underground canal system brings water and natural fertilizer to the rice. The result, says Julia Watson, a landscape designer and Columbia professor, is some of the most biodiverse and productive rice-growing land in the world. Watson first visited the subak seven years ago when she began researching her new book, Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, which dives into the history, philosophy, and engineering behind climate-resilient infrastructure developed by indigenous people: ?those who have evolved a cumulative body of multigenerational knowledge, practices, and beliefs of the environment in which they live,? she tells Curbed.
As Watson argues in her book, such ?traditional ecological knowledge??the ?TEK? in Lo-TEK?could unlock more sustainable solutions to ...