IMPROVISED HOMES IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS

© DAVID CARR-SMITH 2005 : all images & text are copyrighted - please accredit text quotes - image reproduction must be negotiated via dave@artinst.entadsl.com

Key F11 for full-screen on/off.

Click on images to enlarge.

BOOK: DAVID CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES

"GRAIN-SILO" SQUAT 1989 to 1998

ATTICS - p4(of 4) :

the NORTH ATTIC

< SILO - INTRO <
< ATTICS - p1: "MUSEUM" & "PYRAMID" <
< ATTICS - p2: NORTH & SOUTH ATTICS INTRO / SOUTH ATTIC INTRO & APTS <
< ATTICS - p3: SOUTH ATTIC APTS - cont <
   ATTICS - p4: NORTH ATTIC INTRO & APTS
> SILO - DRYING TOWERS >

the NORTH ATTIC & ITS APTS

NORTH ATTIC & APTS - PLAN

(DR 2006 based on 8-95 dr)

The attic is 46 metres long / 11.4 metres wide. Divided (as defined by its roof-trusses and its underlying silos) into 12 transverse bays.

Unlike the S-Attic's the access gallery along the E-side varies in width as each apt claims more space: from 3.80m, to 2.70m, to 1.90m.

the NORTH ATTIC ACCESS GALLERY


MUSEUM: CAUSEWAY TO THE N-ATTIC ENTRY AT FAR END (pic 6-94 / to NNW)	N-ATTIC (BAY-1): GALLERY FROM MUSEUM ENTRY - PEAT'S APT WALLS (pic 9-94 / to N)	N-ATTIC (BAY-1): GALLERY ENTRY SPACE (pic 9-93 / to NE)

N-ATTIC (BAY-1): GALLERY TO NORTH END (pic 9-94 / to N)	N-ATTIC (BAY-2): GALLERY WC (HENRIETTE'S INVENTION) (pic 9-94 / to NE) An early artifact of the squatted Attics: a conventional porcelain WC surrounded by an exquisitely economic screen-wall of two sections of Silo steel-ducting and a red-curtain entry; on the inside a 'chance' flange supports loo-roll and book. A 10cm gap between the overlapping sections plays a subtle joke on 'privacy': inviting voyerism but revealing only wall. The ambiguity of its location on what a stranger to these collectively occupied buildings cannot help feeling is both a 'street of front-doors' and internal domestic space, increases the disquiet. Its structure is reminiscent of the collapsable work-huts of telephone engineers and of course the pavement 'pissoirs' of A'dam and Paris.	N-ATTIC (BAY-2): GALLERY WC - INSIDE (pic 9-94 / to NNW) In connection with realising this object - a transforming of dumped metal from the N.Tower - Henriette emphasised " ... suprise, the 'Ah Ha' experience" - remarking "It's so nice living here, it gives so much pleasure these kind of things, its like playing" - and that the result is "practical and fun, beauty". It's instructive to compare the 'inspired economy' of this facility with its 'properly-built' cement-block square-walled S Attic rival. Which would mass-culture call 'primative'? - yet this version is more servicable: as well as more easily made and modified, and it has a shelf, and cracks jokes!

N-ATTIC (BAY-3): GALLERY & ENTRY TO JAROEN'S (WAS RITA'S) APT (pic 9-94 / to N)	N-ATTIC (BAY-4): GALLERY WINDOW OPEN & REFLECTING HET IJ & SKY (pic 6-94 / to EEN)	N-ATTIC (BAY-4): VIEW INTO RITA'S APT THROUGH ITS GALLERY FACADE (pic 9-93 / to W)

N-ATTIC (BAY-5): GALLERY FACADE OF RITA'S APT (pic 9-94 / to WWS)	N-ATTIC (BAY-8): GALLERY WITH RUTGER'S APT FACADE & OPEN WINDOWS (pic 9-94 / to SSE) All the windows' glass was broken but all the frames are original - there was not much weather-decay on the east side.

the NORTH ATTIC APTS
[ NB: Apts are designated by the names of their present occupiers (who are not necessarily their makers)]

Seperated by 11m of "Museum" causeway the two Attics developed slightly differently:

The N Attic exemplifies the Collective's decision that Attic & Ground-Floor living-spaces should not exceed three bays/rows of silos (approx 11.5m). There are thus only four 3-bay apts; however all differ in width: the first (a mirror of the S side) is gouged by the Attic's central Museum access and totals only 73m²; the next two: 96m² and 110m², increasingly squeeze the access gallery; the last (like its almost-identical south twin) is huge, occupying the whole width and totalling 188m² (with its lower floor but without its roof platforms).

With no shared facility ¾ of its apts have their own bath and/or shower; Henriette's even has its own WC, the others share the 'primative' gallery WC.

Its four apts are shown below:

PEAT MOSS APT (1992- )
RITA APT (19## -)
RUTGER Z APT (1990- )
HENRIETTE v REESEMA APT (Autumn 1989- )

PEAT MOSS APT (1992 -)

PEAT (BAY 2/3):

(pic 6-94 / to NNW)

Like Andrea's in the S-Attic this first apt in the N-Attic's row loses space to the attic's central entry from the "Museum" - thus it is only 73m².

Peat moved into the Silo in 1992 (when the "Red Light District" squat "Patapoe" was renovated) to cook in the Kroeg and make performances. When a year later he acquired this apt-space it was already 'roughly sketched': external walls and a small platform under the roof's centre (now storage and guest-bed). Peat has now covered most of the concrete floor with carpet on flat-surfaced wood palettes and equipped it almost completely from the weekly street-dumps: sink, frige, cooker, two video-tape players, a CD player, and furniture; he made the table; the skull painting is a friend's.

The apt is in the midst of a reorganisation.

PEAT (BAY 2/1):

(pic 9-94 / to S)

RITA APT (19## -)

RITA (BAY 4): VIEW THROUGH ITS GALLERY WINDOW

(pic 9-93 / to WWS)

RITA (BAY 4/5): RITA HAS LEFT & JAROEN IS IN TRANSITORY RESIDENCE

(pic 9-94 / to WWN)

Jaroen is beginning the construction of a habitable living-space in the peak of the New-Silo tower [Re: NEW-SILO - p2]

RUTGER ZUIDERVELD APT (1990 -)


RUTGER (BAY 8/7/6): (pic 9-94 / to S)	RUTGER (BAY 7): STOVE (pic 9-94 / to SE) A wood-burning stove from the third apt in the row, made by Ruitger for the winter of 1993 (when the ban on Attic wood-stoves had somewhat relaxed). (This is a bigger and simple: no water-heating, version of Connie's Gr-Fl). It uses a 1.6m high steel cone that was found in the "Museum": once part of a small 'cyclone-seperator' that whirled dust from grain. The cone is fuelled through its own in-situ door and raised on little legs so that its round ash-tray can be slid from under it. The robust chimney is Silo suction pipe.	RUTGER (BAY 7/8/9): (pic 9-94 / to WWN)

RUTGER (BAY 8/9): (pic 9-94 / to NNW)

HENRIETTE VAN REESEMA APT (Autumn 1989 -)

Henriette's was the first apt in the North-Attic: she came to the Silo 2 months after the squatting, began building it in Autumn 1989 and occupied it from February 1990. Her apt is a huge 188m² space across the north end; like Koik's in the south it occupies the main attic's last bay and extends through the brick arches (that underpin the gable-end of the Silo's main roof) into the terminating mansard loft and its shallow windowed floor beneath. Unlike Koik's which is dark complex and object filled, Henriette's space-beyond-the-arches is light simple and empty: a huge dance-studio lit through a glazed west wall.

One enters Henriette's at the gallery's north end via an elegant scrapped glazed-door into a kitchen-space, narrowed at first by Rutger's overlapping apt, its wooden wall faced with shelves behind doors of scrap windows; and floored with marble fragments found scattered on KNSM Eiland's defunct dock-railway. The first full-width bay opens to the left beneath a bed-platform into a living-room that spans the remaining width. At both sides of this last bay before the arches windows give access via short steps to the shallow-pitched roofs that jut into the space above the water - each engineered by Henriette to mediate contrasting experiences of space and view.

She has made daring structural modifications: not only dropped the pitch of the east side-roof to form a flat terrace but, to convert the entire mansard for dance, removed its longitudional beams and pillars and on its west side cut the roof's lowest segment along its junction with the floor, jacked this massive timber slab like a hinged flap onto supporting posts and filled the gap with street-found windows and the loft with light.

The 88m² dance-space has a smooth hardboard floor (brought from a similar studio in Boelgakov squat) laid on "layers and layers" of carpet. Through its terminating wall a door opens into the "Iron-Tower" (N-Tower) built against the Silo's north end. Down a short stair is an 'underfloor' used to store clothes and performance-costumes; with a glass-divided room housing a bath raised on steel ducting legs and a WC perched in a wall-alcove like a throne.


HENRIETTE (BAY 9): KITCHEN WITH APT ENTRY (pic 9-94 / to S) Like Koik's in the south Henriette's north-end apt was able to claim three whole-width bays (10/11/12). Unlike Koik's her's also includes 1/3 of bay 9, enabling a 2-bay wide kitchen. The apt is partitioned with many scrapped glazed windows and doors - the gallery entry is a delicate glazed double door; the shelves lining the bay-9 inner wall are doored with glazed windows; the living-room, bed platform, and dance studio are screened with glazed doors and windows, and her pièce de résistance, the mansard's new W facade, is entirely scrapped windows.	HENRIETTE (BAY 9): KITCHEN CUPBOARDS (pic 9-93 / to SSW) The wall of Rutger's intruding apt is faced with window-doored shelves. the floor is partly paved with broken marble.	HENRIETTE (BAY 9/10): KITCHEN FROM APT ENTRY (pic 9-94 / to NNE) Looking along the kitchen's length from the apt's entry door. The complex arch-doors to the dance-space are a sum of smaller windows; to the left, under the laddered bed-platform, one enters the long living-room. The right-hand end window is the access to the terrace made by Henriette on the east-roof.

HENRIETTE (BAY 9): KITCHEN WORK PLACE (pic 9-94 / to SE)	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): WINDOW ACCESS TO THE EAST ROOF TERRACE (pic 6-94 / to EES)	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): THE EAST ROOF TERRACE - FROM ITS ENTRY STEPS (pic 9-93 / to EES) This is a relaxing viewing place from which to watch the Ij

HENRIETTE (BAY 10): THE EAST ROOF TERRACE (pic 6-94 / to WWN) At each end of the main body of the building 28m² shallow (13°) roofs project 6m from the facades - easily reached through the large windows. Henriette modified both roofs but in 'opposite' ways, affording strongly contrasting spatial experiences: 'protected' and 'exposed'. She cut the centre portion of this east roof along its root and dropped it to the horizontal, achieving a flat terrace walled by the shallow triangles of the roof's remains: a vantage that (except at its front where the pitch and fall resumes!) is opposite to the west roof in location and vertigo. Whereas the raised platform on the west roof exposes one unprotected to the excitements of space, this east roof 'cradles' and offers flowers, table and chairs from which to enjoy at leasure the spectacle of Het Ij.	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): THE EAST ROOF TERRACE - VIEW TO SOUTH (pic 6-94 / to S)	HENRIETTE (BAY 9/10): N END OF KITCHEN (pic 6-94 / to NW) The living-room and the dance studio are screened from the kitchen with partitions of scrap windows - part fixed walls and part hinged flaps [ref also next pic]. A crude ladder is propped against the bed platform.

HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM - FROM KITCHEN (pic 9-94 / to WWS) View down its length to the stepped window-exit onto the west-roof platform.	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM (pic 6-94 / to WWN) The living-room viewed from entry under the bed-platform, much of whose wood was fished from the water (including beams from a portion of the Silo's roof lifted from this room and blown into Het IJ by a 1990 storm!). Before the partly bricked-up centre arch is the living-room's wood-burning stove. At the room's bright windowed end short steps invite one's exit to the west-roof's exposed platform.	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM - STOVE (pic 9-94 / to WWN) The living-room's stove was 'designed' by choosing parts and only then determining assembly. Ernst Leven [GR-FL] - maker of the Kroeg's first stove - welded it. The fire-brick hearth is encased in a portion of rectangular pipe common in the Silo. The conical 'chimney-tower' is an inverted 'distributor' chute - in it there is a structure of baffles that "make the heat work". This whole assembly extends as an 8m smoke-pipe across the dance-space.

HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM (pic 6-94 / to EEN) Looking towards the glazed doors that can isolate the living-room from the kitchen. The glazed face of the bed-platform reflects the triangle of the roof platform and the Houthaven water (and my camera standing in the exit-window!).	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM W END SITTING & WORK PLACE (pic 6-94 / to SE) Wooden floor was laid between the concrete paths of silo-charging hatches. The living-room's floor planks were once the ground-floor's numbered box-tubes that directed discharged grain from silos to conveyors - the highest number Henriette observed was "121", she said there were"loads more" Most furniture is street-found except a pale-green kitchen chair "from London", her grandfather's curved-wood chair, and the steel-couch: half of a salvaged bed (from a burnt City Council 'bankrupcies-warehouse' near the "End of the World" squat on Java-Eiland, Havens Oost).	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): LIVING-ROOM W END WITH WINDOW-ACCESS TO THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM (pic 6-94 / to SSW)

HENRIETTE (BAY 10): THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM FROM ITS ACCESS WINDOW (pic 6-94 / to NW) At each end of the main body of the building, 28m² shallow (13°) roofs project 6m from the facades - easily reached through the large windows. Henriette modified both roofs but in 'opposite' ways, affording strongly contrasting spatial experiences: 'exposed' & 'protected'. In summer '92 on this west roof (24m above the Houthavens) she built this 4.3m platform of scrap-wood levelled on a thin steel under-frame welded by Bart (a 'demo' of structural economy!). In complete opposition to the east roof's sense of 'balustraded leisure', this west-roof platform exposes one to the excitement of participating in the physical attributes of its tremendous view unmodified by security - in unprotected continuity with its direction, gravity, & space! (The big barge at the nearest pier would transport approx 1500 metric-tons of cargo).	HENRIETTE (BAY 10): ON THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM - LIVING-ROOM ACCESS WINDOW (pic 6-94 / to EES) South of Henriette's facade is the contrasting bay-9 window of Ruitger's space.	HENRIETTE (BAY 10/11/12): ON THE WEST ROOF PLATFORM - VIEW OF SILO NORTH END (pic 6-94 / to N) Henriette's dance studio (bays 11/12) displays its row of scrap windows, inserted under its raised (once 'blind') mansard roof. At the inner corners of the platform are grassy shower-trays.

HENRIETTE (BAY 11/12): DANCE SPACE (pic 6-94 / to WWN) Henriette removed the wooden posts and lonitudinal beams for unobstructed space, and raised & glazed the west-roof for light. Across the dance-floor in the far corner is the stepped entry through the Silo's end wall into the adjoining "Iron Tower"	HENRIETTE (BAY 12/11): DANCE SPACE ROOF (pic 9-94 / to SW) The Silo's 2-bay mansard end roofs have shallower and simpler trusses than the main Attic roofs. The smoke-pipe of the living-room stove traverses the space (helping to warm it), and exits through the North-Tower.	HENRIETTE (BAY 12/11/10): DANCE SPACE SOUTH WALL ARCHES INTO LIVING-ROOM (pic 9-94 / to S)

HENRIETTE (BAY 12/11): DANCE SPACE WEST EDGE (pic 9-94 / to SSE) The west end of the mansard truss is strangely exposed without its steeply descending roof - detached from it by Henriette, raised to horizontal and crudely propped. Inhancing the 'discomfort' of its detachment a huge saw leans on it and a tubed power cable descends its socket via its outer, erstwhile roofed, edge.	HENRIETTE (BAY 12/11): DANCE SPACE WEST EDGE WITH A HATCH OPEN TO THE UNDER-FLOOR (pic 6-94 / to S)	HENRIETTE (BAY 12): UNDER-FLOOR - BATH & WC FROM CLOTHES STORE (pic 9-94 / to WWS) The 3.6m wide under-floor is entered at the NE corner of the dance-space. The first 2/3rds is a store for clothes, performance costumes and gear; the last 1/3rd is for bath and wc.

HENRIETTE (BAY 12): UNDER-FLOOR - BATH & WC (pic 9-94 / to WWN) In the shallow under-floor beneath the dance-space is a bath supported on 3 square silo-charging tubes, the front one is as found: still fixed over its silo-opening (its up-draught sealed by the bath!). The WC is raised and recessed into a bricked-up window in the Silo's once outer wall (now shared with the N Tower). Their elevation was necessary to connect with the N Tower's sewer-pipe (at its L-6 Kitchen).	HENRIETTE (BAY 12/11/10): EXTERIOR WEST FACADE (pic-extract 6-94 / to NE) Visible are the small strip of windows lighting the under-floor bath (Bay 12) [Re: previous pic]; the big dance-space windows inserted by Henriette under the raised mansard roof (Bays 12/11); the 'domestic' windows of the living-room (Bay 10), with one open for access to the roof-platform - seen from beneath, raised on its welded frame. To the right (Bay 9) is a window of Rutger's living-space.