Cavan Lewis Walker - Stitching (In Progress)

Stitching (In Progress)

Professor Jeremy Magner // Arch 471
Spring 2024 - Integrations

[In Collaboration with Anja Cordell & Caleb Nutt]

"Our inquiry will be focused on the former McClung Warehouse site on Jackson St. in Downtown Knoxville. Situated between an expansive rail network and the cultural heart of Knoxville, the site remains contentious and conflicted as contemporary development agendas and financing schemes have failed to come to fruition.

An industrial program will require the first-order integration of a kiln - a ‘powered’ architectural technology intensifying energy from regional networks into production, often in the transformation of matter into materials and products. In general, the kiln is an element akin to the hearth, a device that catalyzes and intensifies social organization and dictates environmental control strategies through the accumulation, transformation, and dissipation of energy. An inquiry into the spectacular pragmatism of kiln typologies will lead to secondary programs that feed off of the literal and cultural energy that the kiln represents as an architectural technology. We will consider these relationships between technology, energy, and program metabolic - the building as an organism reliant on external resources and internal processes, with hybrid animal and mechanical qualities attuned to community and adaptability."