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

"GRAIN-SILO" SQUAT 1989 to 1998

GROUND FLOOR  - p3(of 4) : 

the LIVING-SPACES 

< SILO - INTRO <

< GROUND-FLOOR - p1 <

< 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 - cont ... 
[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 & on pages 2 & 4:

THE SOUTH WING LIVING-SPACES:
ERNST  (19## -)  [Chambers 5/6 (S)]
FRED  (1989 -)  [Chambers 2/3 (S)]
ROLF (19## -)  [Chamber 4 (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)]
AREND  (1989 -)  [Chambers 8/9/10 (N)]
HUUB  (19## -)  [Chamber 11 (N)] 

SILO- GROUND-FLOOR PLAN (WITH APT NAMES)  (info 1995)

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the NORTH WING  

This Sub-Section displays the more orderly and domestic group of five to the north of the central Hall :   ...in process

BART’s is the largest, and one of the earliest: a three-chambered two-thirds-width living-space with a mezzanine over the Gang access, and a huge quadrant workshop gouged from the central Hall. The most elaborate of all the Ground-Floor spaces. 

CONNIE’s is a later, one-chamber apt, which extends over the access gallery and its separate Gang jewellery-workshop as a glazed mezzanine.

DURO's  

AREND’s three-chambered two-thirds-width living-space contains a complex variety of interlocking functional spaces, including a bakery and a music-studio.

HUUB's  

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BART LIVING-SPACE (1989 - ) [Hall & Chambers 1/2/3 (N)]     
[all "quotes" are Bart's] [main-text: most written in 5-94] 

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WORK-SHOP

The biggest living-space on the Ground-Floor occupies a prime site: not only the first three transverse chambers on the central Hall’s north side, it has also bitten out a huge quadrant from the Hall itself: a vast workshop enclosed behind a massive polygonal barrier of horizontal planks, including a section of black abraded late-17th century timber wall and fitted door, replete with historical graffiti, brought entire by boat from the “Boelgakov” squatted warehouse. Against the outside of this ‘sea-wall’ a confused flotsam of dusty and oily bikes has collected, its outer fringes refreshed by a daily tide of use. 

From the heavy monstrous gloomy mono-functional Hall via a small door through this cyclopean wall into the bright workshop is a radical transition, a sudden astonishing complexity of interweaved activities and objects, a multitudinous pattern so harmonious it shocks ones understanding into groping for explanation. I 'saw' a film set, as if everything was artfully arranged, each last detail, of a complexity however impossible to control or illustrate. Of course it was arranged, but 'harmonious' precisely because arranged without artifice - simply a consequence of multiple working proceedures of minimum effort and means, that sorted the myrid tasks and objects 'automatically' in patterns of convenience, ease, accessibility - a resultant harmony so 'natural' it resembled a relatively enclosed portion of a complex landscape, an ecological pocket displaying mutidudinous patterns of averaged competition, cooperation and symbiosis. I was shocked, this was my most profound experience so far of beauty that is the correlate of 'chance', or rather 'pragmatism': a beauty that manifests precisely because the activity that initiates/manifests it is innocent of aesthetic intention, without style - here the means and results of invention, fabrication and repair of anything from a pocket torch to a motorised sculpture. It seems huge and far removed, a direction at a content-tangent to the other outways from the Hall: the ante-room of a quite different region - a gap in the far wall shows huge soft curtains skipped by a church, draping an entrance into castle-like spaces.  

 

BART WORKSHOP S-ENTRY FROM HALL

(pic 6-94 / to NW)

Bart's workshop's massive wooden quadrant protrudes into the entry-hall: a place intermediate between the Silo's most frequented meeting place and the most central of its seminal apts - it may serve (when Bart's entire living-space is not locked) as a social entrepot (this may focus in an ordinary room along its E side: the Silo workers' tea-break room (re-fitted by Bart as his apt's kitchen/bath-room)) - it is also, though Bart controls its state of order, used by and on behalf of others' needs and innovations throughout the Silo.

From this entry one looks across the workshop and through the conveyor-gap in its far wall into Bart’s three-chambered apt. A small motorised 'art-machine' is trundling towards me! 

 

BART WORKSHOP: VIEW ACROSS ITS LENGTH FROM ITS S-END TO THE APT ENTRY

(pic 8-93 / to N)

The workshop is as innocent of 'taste and meaning' as most workshops, factories, garden sheds, studios and storerooms, but has unusual dimensions of richness that go beyond the practical - it's the home's expressive extension and constructive source and the warmth of domestic living permeates it.

This workshop was one of my earliest encounters with the results of pragmatic improvisation on the scale of 'environment' - (which by the way, can not be summated in a single static and framed view, or detailed sufficiently in a photo). It looked as artificial, contrived, as staged as a film-set, yet of a dazzlingly integrated complexity of visual detail and patterned functions impossible to control, let alone to fake! - it had to be as inevitable as ‘chance’, such a degree//quantity of order could only be accumulated by uncontrived procedures. 

However, like all this book’s examples (except two of the De Loods quay houses) this environment is not completely invented - in this case the floor, ceiling and two of the enclosure’s sides preceded the workshop: the floor is visibly a ‘plinth’ or ‘stage’ for the origination it supports.

BART WORKSHOP: W-SIDE ACCUMULATION

(pic 9-94 / to NW)

A suspension-line whose load proceeds from tubes and ropes to drying washing. At its far end and round the corner is the second door-entry from the Hall.

 

 

 

 

BART WORKSHOP: W-WALL

(pic 6-94 / to W)

BART WORKSHOP: E-SIDE WALL WITH KITCHEN ENTRY

(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

BART KITCHEN/BATHROOM ALONG WORKSHOP'S E-SIDE

(pic 6-94 / to NW)

BART WORKSHOP FROM CHAMBER-1 ENTRY

(pic 9-94 / to S)

 

BART APT - WORKSHOP EXIT TO THE APT'S THREE CHAMBERS

(pic 6-94 / to N)

Looking from the workshop’s exit down steps into Bart's 3-chambered apt, across the first chamber (a general living-room and sitting-place), through the curtained entry to the second (bedroom and wood-store), to a distant glimpse of the third (store and mezzanine sit-place). 

The luxurious curtains were found in a church skip. Their beautiful individual poise arises directly from pragmatic (not aesthetic) usage: the left tucked behind heavy speakers, the right (beside the stove) ribbon-tied.

This is a view along the N-wing's E-side conveyor path, through it's entry-gap into the Hall. One of the two conveyor paths that cut through the 12 transverse chambers of the N wing (the other is the present 'Gang').

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CHAMBER 1: GENERAL LIVING/SITTING ROOM   

Bart's apt can be entered five ways. Three via his workshop: two from the Hall and the other "secret" (a small window hidden round its NE corner). Two directly into his chamber-1 livlng-room - one at each end: from the water-side through its big transparent door and from the Gang, the long internal-street. This latter entry faces the Silo's second dijk door; tucked behind a bush on the dijk front - this obscure door functions as Bart's outside 'front-door', next to it a knobbed steel lever pulls a bell-wire which (sawing the door's brick arch!) passes across the Gang and through the many-paned entry-facade of Bart's living-room - where it chimes a church bell hanging at chest-height from the high ceiling, whose long vibrating cord like a plumb-line before one's face (so rarely seen thus), leads the eye down its tension to the mass of bronze.

This strange and marvellous 1st chamber is a junction of all the apt's entry routes; a general living and sitting place. Near the centre of this long living-room stands its stove - next to the curtained opening into two further parallel chambers (which, unlike the living-room with its large transparent doors and the light from its joined workshop, are cave-like with only small high windows emphasising the huge walls). ... in process

BART APT'S BELL-PULL (TO CHAMBER 1) ON SILO'S DIJK DOOR 2 

(pic 6-94 / to SE) 

The bell-lever's knob is wearing a groove in the brick and its cable is cutting the arch. This cable crosses the Gang, enters the apt's chamb-1 facade and chimes a church bell that hangs inside.

BART APT: GANG-FACADE WITH CHAMBER 1 ENTRY DOOR

(pic 9-94 / to SSE)

The chamb-1 apt-facade of skipped doors and windows. This delicate facade set between the massive white ends of transverse walls, includes one of the round-topped Norderkirk windows (which also front Milou's bedroom-mezzanine).   

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 W-END - MUSIC AREA THROUGH GANG EXIT DOOR TO THE SILO'S (SECOND) DIJK EXIT

(pic 6-94 / to WWS)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 CENTRE - DESK & WORKSHOP ENTRY (NIGHT)

(pic 6-94 / to S)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 CENTRE - WORKSHOP ENTRY

(pic 9-94 / to SSE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 CENTRE - WORKSHOP ENTRY & QUAY DOOR

(pic 6-94 / to SE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - STOVE & FIREPLACE

(pic 6-94 / to NE)  

 

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 CENTRE - STOVE (NIGHT)

(pic 9-94 / to W)  

The enormous 2.3m-high stove is an 'early model' by one of the pioneers of the Silo's stoves - Bart in fact made it in 1986 (before the Silo was squatted) for his apt in the factory squat Bührmann and brought it to the Silo in '89. It once stood in Bührmann's cellar, a huge water expansion-tank for the factory's over-sized central-heating system. The tank's access hatch is its door for fuelling and cleaning the fire-brick hearth. In the Silo the stove was improved in small ways: he torched out the centre of its access door and welded on a glazed inspection/air-draught door; fitted a new chimney, a heavy piece of Silo piping welded to its top, which crosses the 5m stretch across the living-room to the outside. The stove is capable of heating the 180m³ chamber of the living-room, and warming the whole 55Om³ draughty apt.

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 CENTRE - STOVE DOOR

(pic 6-94 / to WWN)  

 

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - FIREPLACE

(pic 11-97 / to NNE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - FIREPLACE DETAIL

(pic 6-94 / to WWN)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - SIT-PLACE 

(pic 6-94 / to NE)

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - SIT-PLACE 'BAROQUE' COUCH

(pic 6-94 / to SSW)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - SIT-PLACE 

(pic 9-95 / to NE)

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - SIT-PLACE WITH VISITOR BOAT

(pic 9-94 / to NE)  

The boat “Papillion” is visiting the Silo. Moored at the narrow quay its strange proximity to door and furniture and its indeterminate scale (a ‘grown-up toy’) evokes the child-fantasy of a group of sentient objects in silent conclave. The Silo is a rich 'theatre of phantasmagoria'!

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - QUAY DOOR OPEN - VIEW OUT

(pic 6-94 / to NE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 E-END - QUAY DOOR LOCK

(pic 6-94 / to E)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 1 EXTERIOR - QUAY DOOR OPEN

(pic 6-94 / to SW)  

BART APT: QUAY TERRACE - CATS

(pic 6-94 / to NW)  

Bart's ginger cat "Turbo" survived a fall from Attic-level and has since spent much time in small cosy containers.

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CHAMBER 2: BED & WOOD-STORE  /  CHAMBER 3: UTILITY, STORE,  & SITTING-PLACE MEZZANINE   

Chambers 2 and 3 are cave-like, shielded by the huge walls. with no dijk door to light or open them. 

Behind its deep entry curtains the first is dark 'gothic' and theatrical; with ones back to a wood-pile in the dark alcove on its inner side, one faces a wooden bed-platform shielded by the translucent crimson billows of an aircraft landing-parachute (scavenged from a military dump) hanging on its lines from the orange steel joists.

Entered between the grand drapes of heavy lorry tarpaulins is the last chamber: a studio and store for sculptures and fragments of performing machines - the only part of the apt to reach the Silo's west face, it passes over the Gang to the dijk-face window: this mezzanine, with its own small stove and a sofa is Bart's "North Wind Room", sometimes used when the wind prevented a fire in the great stove.

BART APT: ENTRY TO THE APT'S THREE CHAMBERS - VIEW FROM WORKSHOP EXIT ACROSS 1 INTO 2 & 3 ENTRY

(pic 6-94 / to N)

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 EXIT INTO CHAMBER 1

(pic 6-94 / to SE)  

 

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 WITH BED MEZZANINE

(pic 6-94 / to E)

Though functioning as a passage between the two others, this feels the most private and enclosed of the three chambers. East of the entry-path the space is carpeted and under the platform is a clothes-store. Here there is no quay door and the bed-platform, shielded by a parachute, claims the high window’s light.

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 WITH BED MEZZANINE (NIGHT)

(pic 9-94 / to E)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 - ON THE BED MEZZANINE 

(pic 6-94 / to NNE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 & ENTRY INTO CHAMBER 3

(pic 6-94 / to NE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 VIEW INTO CHAMBER 3

(pic 6-94 / to NNW)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 2 ENTRY INTO CHAMBER 3

(pic 6-94 / to NE)  

BART APT: CHAMBER 3

(pic 6-94 / to W)  

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