How to build a resilient future using ancient wisdom

In her global exploration of Indigenous design systems, architect Julia Watson researches enduring innovations that could help us counter the challenges of climate change. From floating villages to living root bridges that strengthen over time, Watson introduces us to some of these resilient solutions -- and shows how they can teach us to design with nature, instead of against it.

When you imagine the architectural
wonders of the world,

what do you see?

The greatness of the Pyramids of Giza

or maybe the amazing
aqueducts of Ancient Rome?

Both of these are amazing
feats of human innovation.

As an architect,

I've often wondered why do we
monumentalize the ancient wonders

of civilizations that collapsed
such a long time ago?

I've traveled the world
studying ancient innovation,

and what I've found are Indigenous
technologies from living cultures

that are still in use.

And some of these cultures
you may have never heard of.

They live in the most
remote places on earth,

facing environmental extremes
like desert drought and frequent flooding

for generations.

A couple of years ago,
I traveled to northern India

to a place overlooking
the plains of Bangladesh

where the Khasi people live

in a forest that receives more rainfall
than anywhere else on earth.

And during the monsoon season,

travel between villages
is cut off by these floods,

which transform this entire landscape

from a forested canopy
into isolated islands.

This hill tribe has evolved
living root bridges

that are created
by guiding and growing tree roots

that you can barely wrap your arms around

through a carefully woven scaffolding.

Multiple generations of the Khasi men
and the women and the children,

they'll take care of these roots

as they grow to the other
side of that bank,

where they're then planted
to make a structure

that will get stronger with age.

This 1,500-year-old tradition
of growing living root bridges

has produced 75
of these incredible structures.

And while they take 50 years to grow,

in this landscape
they actually last for centuries.

All across the globe,

I've seen cultures who have been
living with floods for thousands of years

by evolving these ancient technologies
that allow them to work with the water.

In the southern wetlands of Iraq,

which are formed by the confluence
of the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers,

a unique, water-based civilization lives.

For 6,000 years,
the Maʿdān have floated villages

on man-made islands that are constructed
from a single species of reed

that grows around them.

And the Qasab reed
is integral to every aspect of life.

It is food for water buffalo,

flour for humans

and building material
for these biodegradable, buoyant islands

and their cathedral-like houses

that they construct
in as little as three days.

And this dried Qasab reed,

it can be bundled into columns,

it can be woven into floors
or roofs or walls,

and it can also be twisted into a rope

that's used to bind these buildings
without the use of any nails.

The Maʿdān villages
are constructed in the marsh,

as they have been for generations,

on islands that stay afloat
for over 25 years.

Although global attention
is focused on the pandemic,

cities are still sinking
and sea levels are still rising.

And high-tech solutions

are definitely going to help us
solve some of these problems,

but in our rush towards the future,

we tend to forget about the past.

In other parts of the world,
where rivers are contaminated with sewage,

a city of 15 million people cleans
its waste water with its flood plains.

On the edges of Calcutta,

flanked by a smoking
escarpment of the city's trash

and ribboned by its highways,

an Indigenous technology of 300 fish ponds

cleans its water while producing its food.

And through a combination
of sunshine and sewage

and a symbiosis
between algae and bacteria,

the wastewater is broken down.

Fish ponds continue
this cleaning of the water

in a process that takes around 30 days.

And this innovation,

it's not just a model for chemical
and coal-power-free purification.

Since Calcutta's core
has no formal treatment,

it's the city's only way
of cleaning the water downstream

before it enters the Bay of Bengal.

What I find so unbelievable
about this infrastructure

is that as cities across the world
in Asia and in Europe

begin to replicate this exact system,

Calcutta is now struggling to save it
from being displaced by development.

And then to deal with flooding
in a completely other way,

the Tofinu tribe has developed
the largest lake city in Africa.

Ganvié, meaning "We survived,"

is built of stilted houses that are
organized around a canal system

that you can navigate by dugout canoe.

And the royal square stands
amongst 3,000 stilted buildings

that include a post office,

a bank, a mosque

and even a couple of bars

that are all surrounded
by 12,000 individual fish paddocks,

or mangrove acadjas.

This chemical-free artificial reef
covers almost half of the lagoon

and feeds one million people
that are living around it.

What amazes me

is that while an individual acadja
is pretty insignificant,

when it's multiplied by 12,000,

it creates an Indigenous technology
the scale of industrial aquaculture,

which is the greatest threat
to our mangrove ecosystems ...

but this technology --

it builds more biodiversity than before.

Just earlier this year,
when I was back home in Australia,

the craziest thing happened.

The burned ash from the bushfires
surrounding Sydney rained down on us

on Bondi Beach.

And worried about carbon emissions --

not viral transmissions --

we were already wearing masks.

The air was so choked by a plume of smoke

that was so big that it reached
as far away as New Zealand.

Then in the midst of these wildfires,

which were the worst
we'd ever seen on record,

something unexpected happened,

but incredibly amazing.

The ancestral lands in Australia,

where Indigenous fire-stick
farming was practiced,

were saved as these fires
raged around them.

And these ancient forests --

they survived because of seasonal,
generational burning,

which is an Aboriginal practice
of lighting small, slow and cool fires.

So though wildfires
are a natural disaster,

as a consequence of climate change,

they're also man-made.

And what's so amazing about this
is we have the ancient technology

that we know can help prevent them,

and we've used it for thousands of years.

And what I find so fascinating
about these technologies

is how complex they are

and how attuned they are to nature.

And then, how resilient
we could all become

by learning from them.

Too often when we are faced with a crisis,
we build walls in defense.

I'm an architect,

and I've been trained
to seek solutions in permanence --

concrete, steel, glass --

these are all used to build
a fortress against nature.

But my search for ancient systems
and Indigenous technologies

has been different.

It's been inspired by an idea
that we can seed creativity in crisis.

We have thousands of years
of ancient knowledge

that we just need to listen to

and allow it to expand our thinking
about designing symbiotically with nature.

And by listening,

we'll only become wiser

and ready for those
21st-century challenges

that we know will endanger
our people and our planet.

And I've seen it.

I know that it's possible.