Making Kilns

Making Kilns is a material and process oriented community led action. Its focus is on making a kiln landscape in a development area of Canada Water [London] with teenagers of an educational charity, Global Generation. The design is an adventure landscape of mud, clay, growing, burning and making. [1] First, we met and worked with the teenagers, we dug, gathered and molded clay, and built and fired a pit-kiln - finding a profound appreciation for fire that is often absent in our urban environments. [2] Second, we developed the concept for the kiln landscape through clay modelling with the teenagers. Their work produced inspirational designs that led the process to make a working wood feed Khmer Kiln. [3] During the third stage I developed a wider masterplan proposal of rubble, soil and timber from existing trees - materials that would be used to fuel the kiln. The project values and arranges materials through creating landforms, structures and fuel for firing the kilns. The landscape works with the temporal and material cycles of kilns (rebuilding, burning, and making) and more natural processes of decaying, regenerating, and exploring - all led by the interaction of young teenagers with landscape architects.

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