num_pages: 420
description: 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 humanitys 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.LoTEK 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.
language: English
title: Lo–Tek: Design by Radical Indigenism
publisher: Taschen