In an era of high-tech and climate extremes, we are drowning in information while starving for wisdom. Constructed rice terraces are now considered one of the world's most important ecosystems, acting as massive absorption or purification systems and as nutrient and biodiversity storehouses. Across the world, indigenous communities like the lfugao in Philippines and the Subak in Bali have developed the Palayan and Subak terracing and aquaponic systems that take full advantage of local ecosystems, including wetland microbes, plants, and wildlife that compose the primary building blocks of the global water, nitrogen, and sulphur cycles.

In a mountainous landscape where arable land is scarce, their combination of shallow water, high nutrient levels, and high productivity is ideal for the growth of organisms at the base of the food web that then feed a diverse number of fish, amphibians, shellfish, and insect species, while continuous supplying food. Many species of birds and mammals rely on rice terraces for food, water, and shelter, during migration and breeding, making their existence important to the conservation of global biodiversity. With techniques unchanged for 2000 years, their biological performance has potential to inform the integration of vertical farming and landscaping within the infrastructures of the future. The terracing innovations that are constructed on slopes of up to seventy degrees, have a scale and steepness similar to that of a skyscraper, hinting at the opportunities that our urban, vertical environments could become havens for aquatic, terrestrial, and airborne biodiversity.

Countering the idea that indigenous innovation is primitive and exists isolated from technology, are Lo—TEK systems that build on traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and vernacular architecture to generate sustainable, resilient, nature-based terracing technologies. Lo—TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism is a Taschen book by Julia Watson that catalogues millennia-old human ingenuity on how to live in symbiosis with nature.

Lo—TEK Team

Author: Julia Watson
Publisher: Taschen
Art Direction: Julia Watson with W—E Studio, Piera Wolf & Claudine Eriksson
Copy Editor: Avery Robertson
Editor Eal Coordination: Florian Kobler & Nora Dohrmann
Graphic Design: W—E Studio, Piera Wolf & Claudine Eriksson
Illustration: Berk Yazicioglu
Typeface: Favorit by Dinamo

Credits:
- Julia Watson LLC - Manager - Julia Watson