DANUTA CIRCLE
Julia Watson
The landscape architect Julia Watson has one of those careers that’s not easily defined. She is an author, an activist, and an academic. She has installed plants for pollinating insects and birds in Manhattan’s Rockefeller Center, and transformed the surrounding acreage at Rashid Johnson’s Long Island home into an art-filled preserve. The key focus of her work, though, lay in the built environments and traditional technologies of Indigenous communities around the world. She grew up outside Brisbane, in Australia, not far from sites deemed sacred by Aboriginal people; later in architecture school, she learned about First Nations’ relationships to land and infrastructure. Those interests formed the basis of her 2019 book, Lo—TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, which blended specialized study and immersive photography in such a way that led Taschen, her publisher, to coin a new genre: “academic art book.” Now at work on the follow-up, Lo—TEK Water, with case studies and contributions from Indigenous experts, Watson finds herself living a Brooklyn life that is both carefully designed and fluid—to be expected with a four-year-old daughter and a son who’s almost 2. (“Plus a dog, a kitten, and a partner,” she says.) As a mother, she is passing along her twin loves of nature and learning. “I was obsessed with National Geographic as a child,” she says. “I remember sitting in front of our endless bookcase and reading through the spines.” The yellow magazines painted a composite portrait of a world shared by so many different people. Now, through her research into the stewardship of sacred landscapes, she sees human progress in collective terms. “It’s a whole culture that are the engineers of these types of systems.”
What projects are currently working on?
I am now in the final stages of my next book, Lo—TEK Water, due out in September. A project with the Taiwanese government is wrapping up, involving a research and analysis of their largest Indigenous population, called the Amis people, to figure out what they’re confronting in terms of drought and flooding. And for the next Dutch Design Week, I’m working on a pavilion that will be made out of seagrass thatching, an old form of creating buildings that we find all over the globe, though the Netherlands is losing its seagrass.
What is your favorite way to spend time in nature?
I really love doing long treks—four to six days where you have no car and you’re on the land. Usually I do them to a natural, sacred site, so you get to experience different types of landscapes. It’s an incredible journey.
What is your favorite season?
Definitely spring. Growing up in Australia, that was my birthday time, so September–October. But here it’s my daughter's birthday time. After the hibernation of the winter, all the beautiful indicator blooms come out to show that you’re changing season. My daughter is a really incredible plant identifier, even at four. I’m training her on the walk to school, and she can name about 10 different common names now: magnolia, Eastern redbud, tulip, daffodil. It’s just a really lovely way to read your landscape.
What self-care ritual keeps you going?
I follow Ayurveda. I became my own postpartum Ayurvedic doula for my son’s birth, and I do an annual course that meets monthly. So I am tongue-scraping, I’m doing abhyanga, I use all-natural products on my face. I definitely am a person who never uses hairspray or nail polish.
In your approach to wellness, what are you leaning away from and/or toward?
I rely on routines. I’m always in bed at the same time every single night. Four mornings a week I exercise, and we try to eat really healthily. When I was younger, I might have looked to self-help books, but now I’m trying to guide with the basics and not be so heady. I always say, “Be the cloud in the rainstorm,” which is a very Buddhist understanding. Just let things float by you. The whole breadth of emotions is incredibly normal. Emotional regulation, as I see with my kids, is something that you have to learn. Anything that can assist you in that—sleep and exercise and even what you eat, understanding glycemic peaks—is really important.
What is one thing that helps you get energized?
Because I’m a mom and I have two businesses, having a moment where you can just detach is the most amazing thing in the world. It’s very rare for a mom, and we feel guilty when we do that, but it’s the best medicine. I usually leave my Fridays clear—which is not a luxury that everybody can do, though I also work nearly every single night after the kids go to bed. I try to reserve a day where I can be in control and catch up on things and talk to other adults.
How do you wind down for bed?
I get rid of my phone as soon as possible. I do a short stretch, sesame-oil on my feet, and use a nasya oil to sort of moisturize the nasal passages. And every single night I read. Lately it’s a climate-change science-fiction book and a biography of Buckminister Fuller.
What favorite activity keeps you unplugged from the internet?
My kids. I do a lot of drawing with them, and I bought my daughter all these workbooks where she can draw and write and is learning to spell. My son, who’s almost 2, can say the whole alphabet already—I’m not sure he knows what he’s saying. They both just want to learn a lot, but also they’re always saying, “TV, TV!” We allow screen time, but we’re very selective with the television shows they can watch.
How did your birthplace influence who you’ve become?
I grew up in a suburb of Brisbane called West End, or Kurilpa—that’s its indigenous name. It was very diverse. We had Greek, Italian, Vietnamese, Chinese, and First Nation communities all in our neighborhood. Over the road from my Greek Orthodox church was Musgrave Park, which is a very important ceremonial ground for Aboriginal people. I actually co-wrote a high school curriculum, based on my book, that is trying to make the histories of Indigenous and traditional communities around the world the foundation of how we talk about climate change. I’m a huge proponent of institutionalizing Indigenous knowledge.
