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

"GRAIN-SILO" SQUAT 1989 to 1998

the CENTRAL STAIR  - p1(of 1)   

 

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the CENTRAL STAIR & ITS 'TOWER' 

In the building's centre between the long silo blocks is a windowed 3-bay 'tower' capped with a huge wooden 'pyramid' - its impressive scale reduced by whimsical dormers and crenellated balustrades. Its principal mechanical function was vertical grain transport via bucket-conveyors from the Hall at its base to its "Pyramid" head-house, from which, via its great central attic the "Museum", it was sent to various parts of the building for processing, storage, or discharge.

The tower houses a long sequence of narrow wooden strangly domestic stairs (like a 19C tenement-block) - this 'Central-Stair' is the only common route from Ground to Attics. It serves three levels of conventional rooms (director's office, company admin-office, the lab & grain-factor's office); these, the only part of the Silo designed primarily for human functioning and already supplied with water/gas/electricity, were the first locations to be occupied.  Above these the stair re-enters the industrial domain: on landing L-4 the 'domestic-style' stair ends and one must enter a door into part of an erstwhile grain weighing area - now a small 'lobby' containing the strange twisted stair-flight up to the "Museum".

THE SILO'S CENTRAL 'TOWER': E FACADE

(pic-crop 9-94 / to W)

The central 'tower' between the silo-storage wings contains the Silo's only common vertical route: the ' Central-Stair' which, until the last commercial use in 1987, served the company offices and lab (windowed levels 1/2/3), which, already 'semi- domesticated' were sites of the Silo's first live-in occupation. 

L-0: the Central Hall - the portion that is now Bart's workshop - the centre window in his kitchen, the small one to its right is his "secret" exit.

L-1: the erstwhile Silo director's and secretary's office overlooks the Ij and quays through an incongrously 'homely' bay- window - now FROUJKE & DIDERIK's apt.

L-2: the main admin offices - now RUUD's and TON's apts.

L-3: the grain testing lab - now Kimmer's apt [no records].

L-4: the mechanical functions resume (: ?weighing and bagging?).

L-5 is the "Museum" the great central attic via which grain, bucket-elevated from the Hall to its "Pyramid" 'head-house', was distributed to the silo-filling conveyors of the North and South Attics.

THE SILO'S CENTRAL 'TOWER': W FACADE

(pic-crop 9-94  / to W)

L-0: The Hall.

L-1: The "elephant trunk" 'Slurf', projecting from of the central 'tower', housed a conveyor that filled Houthaven-moored barges. Under and behind the Slurf a former ?bagging hall was converted in 19## into the Silo's public art gallery, reached from the dijk up an external wooden stair. On its right is the window of a tiny room squeezed beside it (the temporary home of Sasha). 

L2: Onto the Slurf's top RUUD has extended his apt as a garden-terrace. 

L3: Oska's apt [no records] - probably in the erstwhile office of the grain-factor.

L4: The 3 long lancets front DIDERIK and HUUB's huge store. On its right is the open front of what is now the "Museum's" hoist room   

L5: Over that a row of seven tiny 'windows tucked between the corbels send sunbeams into the dark cavity of the "Museum". 

THE SILO'S CENTRAL 'TOWER': W FACADE -  FROM THE SLURF'S PIER

(pic 6-94 / to E)

 

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the CENTRAL STAIR AND ITS APTS 

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CLIMBING THE STAIR ...

Starting the 22m climb from the rear of the Hall of bikes to the "Pyramid" crowned "Museum", one looks up the stair-welI's narrow central slot threaded with water pipe, strung with bunched telephone cables (fuzed together in a recent fire, dribbling plastic and flashing strands of copper - but still working!), punctuated on each landing with the red drum of a fire-hose.

CENTRAL STAIR: L0: ENTRY AT REAR OF HALL 

(pic 6-94 / to E)

CENTRAL STAIR: L1: VIEW UP TO LANDING L-4

(pic 6-94 / to E)

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CLIMBING THE STAIR ... cont ...

On the next three levels the atmosphere of 'offices' has been subtly skewed to 'apartment-house' by debris of domesticity: pinned photos, dying plants, shower-steam, beer bottles. The change starts on landing L-1 where a shower and wc face a glazed door that reveals what appears to be an ordinary home hallway - a strange suprise: a family flat. 

CENTRAL STAIR: L-1 LANDING WC & SHOWER

(pic 9-94 / to S)

On landing 1, opposite the front-door of Froujke's and Diderik's apt is a wc and shower. A shared facility that they use as the bathroom of their apt. 

CENTRAL STAIR: L-1 WEST - ART GALLERY

(pic 9-94 / to EEN)

A large chamber on the west side of the tower - housed the lower-end of the vertical conveyor (parts of the conveyor are at the rear of the room). 

Entered from the Dijk via its loading-platform up large wooden stairs under the Slurf, and from the Central stair L1 landing. Sometimes open to the public [Ref: SILO PUBLIC-ART]

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FROUJKE K & DIDERIK M APT (19## - ) [L1 - E-side]  

A family home established at the start of the squat. The ordinary rooms of these offices were easily adapted into homes; this was the Silo company Director's and boasts a house-type bay window overlooking Het Ij - incongruously projecting from the Silo's facade as if a suburban house was engulfed within the building.   

FROUJKE APT: ENTRY HALL 

(pic 6-94 / to NNW)

View through to kitchen from 'front-door'.

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - TO KITCHEN END

(pic 6-94 / to WWS)

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - CANDLE HOLDER

(pic 6-94 / to SW)

.....in prep

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - MIRROR

(pic 6-94 / to N)

Froujke made it from Silo sieve hung with her unsold jewellry.

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - TO WINDOW END

(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - CHILD'S PLATFORM

(pic 9-94 / to N)

The raised child's platform and its steps is Diderik's: "for small people to look out".

FROUJKE APT: N-ROOM - CHILD'S PLATFORM

(pic 6-94 / to N)

FROUJKE APT: S-ROOM BED/SIT (EX SILO DIRECTOR'S OFFICE)

(pic 6-94 / to E)

The open window has a child-barrier across it.

FROUJKE APT: S-ROOM BED/SIT - BAY WINDOW

(pic 9-94 / to NNE)

FROUJKE APT: S-ROOM BED/SIT - BAY WINDOW VIEW TO NORTH

(pic 9-94 / to N)

FROUJKE APT: S-ROOM BED/SIT - BAY WINDOW VIEW TO SOUTH

(pic 9-94 / to SSE)

The Silo quay to the dukdalf and the Stenenhoofd (people are socialising on the quay). 

The Silo's Director could watch the loading and discharging of ships and barges: the discharge of grain into the conveyor of the quay; the suction derricks and large ships moored outside the dukdalfs. 

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CLIMBING THE STAIR ... cont 

On the 2nd landing there are two apts (with seperate entries but linked together through a shared kitchen). There is also one of the Silo's strangest 'environmental psycho-shocks', all the more nightmarish for its location next to dwellings: an ordinary little brightly lit Vereniging office with desk, pin-board, steel-locker, and a door one assumes is the office store-cupboard. Open this and at ones feet and before ones face is a huge cavity crossed with platforms disappearing upwards into blackness, sometimes raining from the dark above; an abandoned silo - crumbling and hollow: a spatial/contextual lesion so unexpected I was precipitated on its brink into rapidly cycling memories of fragments of dreams.

CENTRAL STAIR: L2 LANDING - VERENIGING OFFICE

(pic 9-94 / to SW)

The 'office-cupboard' door which opens directly onto an empty silo's gulf is at the rear corner.  

(The office is here in a stripped state - I have always regretted that I missed the opportunity to attempt to record this crucial phenomenon.) 

CENTRAL STAIR: L2 LANDING - TO RUUD'S 'FRONT DOOR'

(pic 9-94 / to W)

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RUUD PANHUIZEN APT (Aug 1989- ) [L2 - W-side] 

RUUD APT: ENTRY PASSAGE FROM 'FRONT-DOOR'

(pic 6-94 / to WWS)

At the far end is the living-room

RUUD APT: ENTRY PASSAGE BATH-'ALCOVE'

(pic 9-94 / to SSW)

RUUD APT: WORK/STORE-SPACE & ENTRY PASSAGE

(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

The remains of a vertical bucket-conveyor (in 8 rectangular wooden tubes) passed through the present work-space.

At the entry-passage end is Ruud's metal-faced 'front-door'; the next (open) door is the wc, next the bath-alcove, the nearest door is a sauna.

I am standing in the living-room entry.

RUUD APT: LIVING-ROOM WITH ENTRY PASSAGE

(pic 6-94 / to NE)

The right-hand door is the entry-passage. At the far end is the kitchen: a link-space between Ruud's and Ton's apts - shared with Ton.

RUUD APT: LIVING-ROOM

(pic 9-94 / to S

RUUD APT: LIVING-ROOM WITH KITCHEN ENTRY

(pic 6-94 / to N)

Beside the stove is a window with steps: the exit to the Slurf terrace. At the far end a door is open to the shared kitchen.

RUUD APT: LIVING-ROOM WINDOW-EXIT TO SLURF-TERRACE

(pic 6-94 / to W)

Window exit to the terrace. Ruud's terrace is supported on the transverse steel joists under the Slurf's roof.

RUUD APT: SLURF-TERRACE WITH LIVING-ROOM WINDOW-EXIT 

(pic 6-94 / to NNE)

The small window is the kitchen.

RUUD APT: SLURF-TERRACE 

(pic 6-94 / to NW)

Note the lower terrace's beautiful glazed-door balustrades.  A ('summer') bath was later installed.

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RUUD & TON KITCHEN [L2 - W-side]

RUUD & TON KITCHEN

(pic 6-94 / to W)

Ruud's and Ton's apts are linked via this kitchen.

RUUD & TON KITCHEN WITH ENTRY TO TON'S LIVING-ROOM

(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

At the far end is a door to Ton's living-room; in the wall on our right is the door to Ruud's living-space.

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TON APT (19## -) [L2- E-side]

TON LIVING-ROOM

(pic 6-94 / to NNE)

Ton's living-space is in the main Silo admin office. 

At the far left is the way to the (shared) kitchen.

TON LIVING-ROOM BURNT

(pic 9-94 / to S)

An accedental fire, started with a candle (in the newly built bed), was put out (and the damage limited to this room) using the Central-Stair fire-hose system installed by Diderick et al.

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CLIMBING THE STAIR ... cont    

On landing 3 there are two more apartments (not recorded or visited) and an 'artistically decorated' shared WC: it's rusty cistern in a frame of golden squirming curls of extruded polystyrene. 

CENTRAL STAIR: L3 LANDING TO VILBJORG'S 'FRONT DOOR'

(pic 11-97 / to W)

CENTRAL STAIR: L3 LANDING WC & SHOWER

(pic 9-94 / to S)

On landing 3 a shared wc with 'art' adornments. 

The extruded-foam cistern-frame demonstrates a radical associational shift - from rusty-urinal-fitting to sumptious-decor - invoked by the minimal means of a flippant doodle.

 

CLIMBING THE STAIR ... cont  

On level 4 a different place begins - the end of domesticity is signalled by a huge and primative rivited-steel girder plunging diagonally from the outer wall up through the floor of the "Museum" (bracing the latter's ceiling-platform against the thrust of the 'Pyramid'). Here the character and position of everything begins to change: to go further one must enter a door (once the anti-squatters' upper limit) into what has become a small lower lobby to the weird "Museum". The open floor that once pertained here has been enclosed (as a huge studio/store-room) behind a bizarre wall like the facade of a minature medieval house; its wooden frame made without nails, the joints plugged and wedged, infilled with plastered wire-netting over insulation foam; the inner face is nailed planks. Crammed in this little ante-room to the wonders of the "Museum" are strange lesions of scale and place: massive industrial steel, the 'model-street' facade, a uniquely graceful wooden stair (of 19th C craft) sheltering the stink of a cats' lavatory; all confined in the harsh gloom-glare of a neon tube and a fat modern plastic sewer pipe's intermittent rushing gurgle.

CENTRAL STAIR: L3-L4: VIEW UP TO L4 FROM STAIR

(pic 6-94 / to NNW)

CENTRAL STAIR: L4 - ANTE-ROOM TO MUSEUM - VIEW THROUGH LANDING DOOR

(pic 6-94 / to WWS)  ... in prep

CENTRAL STAIR: L4 - ANTE-ROOM TO MUSEUM

(pic 11-97 / to SW)

CENTRAL STAIR: L4 - ANTE-ROOM TO MUSEUM - STAIR TO MUSEUM

(pic 9-94 / to SW

CENTRAL STAIR: L4 - ANTE-ROOM TO MUSEUM - STAIR TO MUSEUM

(pic 11-97 / to SSE)

CENTRAL STAIR: L4-L5 - ANTE-ROOM TO MUSEUM - FROM THE STAIR TO THE MUSEUM 

(pic 9-94 / to NNW)  

 

CLIMBING THE STAIR ... cont  

This last strange little wooden stair is our last climb to reach the great central Attic. This stair is unique in the Silo as a craft-based yet purely practical industrial'//workshop object. Made within a society that equated leisure and the domestic with useless aesthetic elaboration and expense, it is - however much it now seems 'craft-quaint' and of domestic scale - it is obviously made, raw and utilitarian, for workshop///industry. The climb is steep and short and every step's unique hand-made, long worn form caresses ones sense.

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