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SILO- GROUND-FLOOR PLAN (WITH APT NAMES) |
© DAVID CARR-SMITH 2005 : all images & text are copyrighted - please accredit text quotes - image reproduction must be negotiated via dave@artinst.entadsl.com
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| CONTENTS | 4 SITES |
SILO |
TETTERODE | DE LOODS | EDELWEIS | APPENDICES | NOTES | SUB-SITES |
BOOK: DAVID CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
"GRAIN-SILO" SQUAT 1989 to 1998
GROUND FLOOR - p2(of 4) :
LIVING-SPACES
<
SILO - INTRO <
< GROUND-FLOOR
- p1: INTRO <
GROUND-FLOOR - p2: LIVING-SPACES
> GROUND-FLOOR
- p3: LIVING-SPACES - cont >
> GROUND-FLOOR
- p4: LIVING-SPACES - cont >
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the
GROUND FLOOR LIVING-SPACES
[NB: Apartments are designated by the names
of their present occupiers - who are not necessarily their makers]
Ten of the Ground-Floor’s eleven private-spaces are shown below and on pages 3 & 4:
THE SOUTH WING LIVING-SPACES:
FRED (1989 -)
[Chambers 2/3 (S)]
ROLF (19## -) [Chamber 4 (S)]
ERNST (19## -) [Chambers
5/6 (S)]
MILOU (1989 -)
[Chambers 9/10 (S)]
YOURI (1990 -) [Chamber 11 (S)]
THE NORTH WING LIVING-SPACES:
BART
(1989 -) [Hall & Chambers
1/2/3 (N)]
CONNIE (1990 -) [Chamber 4 (N)]
DURO (19## -) [Chamber 5 (N)]
SIMONA (1994 -) [Gang-Cell 5 (N)
- part of DURO apt]
AREND (1989 -) [Chambers 8/9/10 (N)]
HUUB (19## -) [Chamber 11 (N)]
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SILO- GROUND-FLOOR PLAN (WITH APT NAMES) |
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the SOUTH WING
This page displays five among the group of six spaces to the south of the central Hall, where (for some reason) four are almost completely specialised ‘pure-art’ studios (egs:1 / 2 / 3 / 5) - the only mono-functional grouping in the Silo :
FRED’s is a two-chamber sculpture-studio with a minimal domestic provision on a mezzanine over the access corridor.
ROLF (who lives outside the Silo) has one of the three work-only spaces: a one-chamber 2/3-width painting studio.
ERNST (who lives outside the Silo) has one of the three work-only spaces: a two-chamber full-width workshop and sculpture studio.
MILOU’s is the earliest and one of the most elaborated on the Ground-Floor: a complex two-chamber, full Silo-width apt, with a small workshop, an inner ‘guest-house’, and a large glazed bedroom mezzanine.
YOURI's single-chamber studio/apt, apart from its small live-in domestic area, is as single-mindedly dedicated to art production as Rolf's studio.
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FRED ABELS STUDIO/APT (Winter 1989 - ) [Chambers 2/3 (S)]
Fred’s two chambered space is mainly confined to the W side of the south wing’s short Gang corridor, over which one of the chambers extends as a small glass-enclosed bed-/living-room mezzanine - his only concession to domestic needs in a space otherwise exclusively sculpture-workshop (typical of the ‘pure-art’ bias of the south end). In this studio for the invention of natural-powered machines, the quayside dukdalf wind-vane sculpture [pic] was made.
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FRED:
CHAMBER 3 |
FRED:
CHAMBER 3 - STOVE |
FRED:
CHAMBER 3 - MEZZANINE VIEW OF WORK-SPACE |
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FRED:
CHAMBER 3 - MEZZANINE |
FRED:
CHAMBER 3 - MEZZANINE |
FRED:
CHAMBER 3 - MEZZANINE WINDOW |
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FRED:
CHAMBER 2 - WORKSHOP |
FRED:
CHAMBER 2 - WORKSHOP |
FRED:
CHAMBER 2 - WORKSHOP |
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ROLF BITER STUDIO (199# - ) [Chamber 4 (S)]
This is an example of the Silo used purely as work-space by someone who lives outside. A small 2/3rd-Silo width single chamber with a single-minded painting-studio function. Rolf has even blocked its only window is to accommodate the best easel position and ensure controllable light.
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ROLF:
CHAMBER 4 - STUDIO |
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ERNST LAEVEN WORKSHOP/STUDIO/APT (1989/90 -) [Chambers 5/6 (S)]
At
the end of the short S Gang access-corridor are Ernst’s two chambers - the
first of the full-width spaces (blocking the others users access to the inner
Silo). The
first chamber is a workshop, with an office raised on a platform over its store;
the second chamber a sculpture studio (and a kind of stasis-space for the posing of
delicately anthropomorphic junk-constructs) - spanning the conveyor-gap in their
dividing walls is a 2m ‘flap-door’: scavenged bendy transparent-plastic sheets held
only-just-sufficiently rigid by an ad hoc web of wood-laths.
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ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP E-END |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP E-END PLATFORM |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP |
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ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP Looking down two-thirds of its length towards the dijk end. It exhibits a wonderfully complex organisation of different ‘micro-functional-locations’ resulting from ‘harmonious-placement-via-personal- pragmatic-use’. |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP W-END |
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ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 -
WORKSHOP N-WALL E-END STORAGE |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 5 - WORKSHOP : DOOR TO STUDIO Exquisite economy ! |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO E-END |
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ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO On the right is the entry from chamber 5.
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ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO At this chamber's far end is a short ladder to a small store-platform and a long ladder up to an opened silo. |
ERNST:
CHAMBER 6 - STUDIO W-END OPEN SILO |
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MILOU
VELING APT (1989 - ) [Chambers 9/10 (S)]
[text
written around 1994/5] [all "quotes" are Milou's]
Begun in 1989, the year of squatting, Milou’s was the first of the great Ground-Floor apts - established in four chambers at the south-east end at a time before spaces were defined. Its inner (north) boundary was finalised early: walled-off from the rest of the Silo in autumn 1989 to confine the guests at Milou’s “benefit-party” for the evicted squatters of the KNSM Eiland encampment [1] . At that time the space was entered from the public dijk through the base of the now separated South Tower and was without structures or fittings except partial conveyor-trough coverings, a temporary bar, and its (existing) wood-burning stove (which on that occasion consumed many of the Ground-Floor’s wooden grain-spouting pipes - four survive in the apt as decor). During 1990 Milou condensed her space into two chambers by walling-off its southern half, however retaining an access, under a new apt (Youri's), to the weird ante-chamber of Paul’s Tower and its exit through a pierced wall [Re: GROUND-FL- p1 / CORNER-TWR].
Though squatted as a studio, by the first year’s end embryonic domestic amenities had accumulated and in February ‘90 Milou began to live in it. She said that its form and use changed in response to real-time social circumstances rather than planning: “the apt needed a different space for different social configurations”, (the kitchen changed position three times).
The apt tended to become a social concourse, increasingly used as a meeting-place and work-shop by guests and others. In ‘91 Milou built herself a place to be private inside this home whose boundaries had been lost: a small ‘house’ (11m2 from an apt of 109m2!) infilling the 4m cell at the dijk-end of the second chamber, raised 1·3m onto a platform "to have a normal height [exterior] window” and with an inner-facing facade of skipped windows. Its wood-stove blew back smoke however (on the E side winds are bad for fires) and when the apt’s social use was more controlled it became a guest-room with a gas heater. Facing it half way down the chamber is another glazed facade (with impressive round-headed windows from the restored Norder Kirk): a mezzanine bedroom that fills the upper end of the remaining space.
With its access into the main body of the Silo blocked by its adjacent two living-spaces (which like itself, fill the building’s whole width) Milou’s must be entered directly from the outside, either through its rear door from the Silo’s private quay or from the public dijk via a distinctive ‘front-door’: one of the small windows that light the sunken ground-floor. Mounting a wooden step up from the cobbles and bending through this small mesh-protected window onto its inner ledge, one enters the looming Silo at its grass-fringed base like a rabbit and appears on the inside standing in the wall’s centre at the head of a rustic ladder, backed by the window-glare like an epiphany - facing down a narrow tunnel-like room extending between white-plastered walls to a gleam of water through a far door, diffused by a screen of pearly glass: the dirt of scavenged windows.
The complexity of this apt belies the simplicity of its container: except for the water-door its two parallel chambers are identical, yet there is little sense of spatial regularity. One clambers down from the dijk window into a long workshop, zoned first for metal then for wood, through a door in the screen of windows into the apt’s kitchen and its more ‘public’ sitting-place that opens to the quay. Through the conveyor-gaps in the huge dividing wall is the dim second chamber, whose small high end-windows serve secondary enclosures: the bedroom mezzanine and the little ‘guest-house’ both filter daylight through their inner glazed facades. I have seen this space however dramatised by luxuriant lights: in the dark cave beneath the mezzanine on a low conversational table candles may be flaming, as a flood-light lying like casual litter behind the bedroom ladder projects across the screen-like central wall a bright black-barred fan of orange, while up near blue ceiling-swags a tiny night-light flickers inside a crumbling hole. [ref: video ... in prep]
The KNSM Eiland squatter-camp of caravans and improvised dwellings began growing on the sand around the artist-squat EDELWEIS in 19##; (the two quite unrelated occupations suffered from mutual disrespect). In preparation for the KNSM housing development the camp was physically moved by the City to a site off the Gevleweg (Houthavens, west of the Silo).
FIRST CHAMBER (BAY 10): WORKSHOP / LIVING/SITTING ROOM & KITCHEN
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MILOU: DIJK
EXTERIOR - CHAMBER 9 'HOUSE' CHIMNEY / CHAMBER 10 ENTRY WINDOW The dijk outside Milou's apt, whose front-entry window is open. The wooden 'step' plus the stone block which props it in place, and the coloured cement 'figurehead' to its left, were all street-found. Grouped on the dijk are seats and improvised table: the ‘cast-skin’ of a conversation, its forming terminated instantly the participants left. Such forms are retrospective in subject-matter. Unlike designed tools whose use is perceived as the (future) potential of their form, these are not designed but 'automatically' accumulated as the means of an ongoing need, which when completed leaves them speaking the behaviour they enabled, not as a future possibility but as actualised content. |
MILOU: DIJK
EXTERIOR - CHAMBER 10 ENTRY WINDOW On the dijk outside Milou's apt - its 'front' entry window is open.
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10- WORKSHOP At the far end is the dijk entry window [ref previous pics] with its 2m wooden steps to the floor.
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10- WORKSHOP |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE TO WORKSHOP'S SCREEN OF WINDOWS Milou's first ('un-competent') structural project done soon after she began to live in the space (1989/90), when it was still open to the silo's south-end (its future boundary possibly already sketched with a screen of curtains). The 4·5m high screen that separates the workshop from the kitchen/sitting space is a wall of five disparate windows and two glazed doors, selected from many that were “bussed-in” from local demolitions (“masses" more are stored in the board-covered conveyor-troughs). A hinged flap above its door can extend the access height. The whole is stiffened by full-height 10x15cm wood. Its dynamic De Stijl like rhythm of rectangles is another example of a ubiquitous sense of space-design apparent in Dutch culture from vernacular to art. The 'Baroque' chair was one of several saved from the street (as a city fashion for such things receeded many were dumped). |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE TO WORKSHOP ENTRY |
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE The kitchen/sitting space at the rear of the workshop. Its exit to the narrow quay has two layers of doors: Milou cut the existing door in half and replaced its central panels with glass (stiffening them with diagonal planks), she also fitted an outer steel and glass rolling door (one of six brought from “Het Veem” a nearby re-conned squat). The concrete floor was painted a beautiful cobalt blue (a colour Milou claims deters flies) which subsequently became a Silo ‘fashion’. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 -
EXIT TO QUAY |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - QUAY ENTRY
DOOR - EXTERIOR |
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING SPACE FROM CHAMBER 9 ENTRY The south wall of chamber 10 seen from the chamber 9 entry. Before the blocked conveyor-path are the sparse kitchen facilities. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - LIVING-SPACE SE
CORNER WITH QUAY DOOR |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - SINK Two of these street-dumped sinks were brought into the Silo. Behind the sink the conveyor-path wall is set back an extra 80cm to accommodate cupboards. |
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE WITH WALL DRAWINGS The dancing figures on the wall were drawn by a visitor and ignored by Milou. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE & CHAIRS Made for the 1989 KNSM squatter-camp party this 2.4m high wood-burning stove was welded by Bart from the dissembled parts of an arcane device (a 'Broekstuk': “trousers”: usually bifurcated!): the spout-like chimney/radiator that now juts from its top was reversed and hinged inside its lower part, switching the flow of grain through a choice of five holes in its rounded base (now sealed with sheet-steel). Incompletely stripped of its machines the Silo yielded many such part-objects which, detached from their functional context, acquired a spurious mystery. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - STOVE MODIFIED VERSION In 19## Jochem modified Bart's stove, sealing its original low door and opening one on the upper right side, whose higher position allowed more wood to be loaded. He also also fitted into the lower chimney a water-can that supplied heated water through a tap.
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - FOUR OBJECTS, TWO SCAVENGED & TWO IMPROVISED The console table is a street-found slab of Italian granite supported on a Silo tube. Through the conveyor opening is chamber 2. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 10 - E-END ACCESS TO 2nd CHAMBER 9 Chamber 2 is viewed through the conveyor path opening, under the extended and glazed bedroom mezzanine. The conveyor opening on its far side is blocked with wooden grain directing chutes: Milou's "first wall". |
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SECOND CHAMBER (BAY 9): SOCIAL SPACE / BED MEZZANINE / 'HOUSE'
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - TO EAST END & MEZZANINE BEDROOM The dark chamber 2 is floodlit, while through its east window, daylight glows in the glazed mezzanine. Its two round-headed windows are from Bart's batch of six from the cellar of Norder Kirk. A car-silhouette on the north wall is part of a Jochem performance piece; (at this time Jochem occupied the apt more than Milou, who worked outside the Silo in the day). |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BEDROOM W-FACADE WINDOWS |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BEDROOM Up on the bedroom mezzanine that began in autumn 1989 as a mere post-supported platform projecting 2m from the rear of the second chamber; extended in ‘91 and again in ‘93 to the present 7·5m glazed floor.
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BEDROOM |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - MEZZANINE BED The huge “gazing head” is an illusion projected on a duvet draped casually through a bifurcated silo-discharge tube. Such visions are common here, where the mind is always on the watch for meanings to fill the strangeness, easily projecting into objects uncircumscribed by ‘neatness’ or ‘design’. The glowing folded mattress with its flanking sculptural-log and painting evokes a ritual setting that endorses ‘dreaming’. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - UNDER-MEZZANINE CLOTHES STORE |
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - TO W END 'HOUSE'
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MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - W END WITH 'HOUSE' FACADE Milou's little 1991 'house' which fills 4m at the chamber's west end began as a mere 1.2m platform on cross beams (with storage under). Enclosed with a facade in 1992 as a refuge from apt visitors, it became a 'guest room'. |
MILOU:
CHAMBER 9 - W END WITH 'HOUSE' & CHAMBER 10 ENTRY |
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YOURI STUDIO-APT (1990 - ) [Chamber 11 (S)]
The most orderly of the southern spaces dedicated to art-production.
This living-space spans the Silo's narrowed south end. Originally part of Milou's huge space, it was separated when she reduced her apt to two chambers in 1990. However she retained a connection from her apt to the Silo's most southern chamber-12 (location of its water pump and the base of Paul's tower), reducing the western third of Youri's apt to a platform over this access passage.
Entered from the raised south portion of the quay, up short steps, through its east window, onto a small platform over a kitchen - the main area is a pit between two staired platforms.
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YOURI:
CHAMBER 11 - STUDIO/APT View from the small entry platform, towards its west-end platform over a passage between chambers 10 and 12. |
YOURI:
CHAMBER 11 - STUDIO/APT View from the mezzanine. |
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<
SILO - INTRO <
< GROUND-FLOOR
- p1 <
GROUND-FLOOR - p2: LIVING-SPACES
> GROUND-FLOOR
- p3: LIVING-SPACES - cont >
> GROUND-FLOOR
- p4: LIVING-SPACES - cont >
| CONTENTS | 4 SITES |
SILO |
TETTERODE | DE LOODS | EDELWEIS | APPENDICES | NOTES | SUB-SITES |
