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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 - p3(of 4) :
the LIVING-SPACES
< 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 and 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)]
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 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 huge 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 procedures of minimum effort and means, that sorted the myriad 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 multitudinous 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 - on the occasion pictured below a small motorised 'art-machine' is trundling towards me and an opening in the far wall shows huge soft curtains skipped by a church, draping an entrance into domestic castle-like spaces.
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BART WORKSHOP: S-ENTRY FROM HALL Bart's workshop's massive wooden quadrant protrudes into the entry-hall - a place intermediate between this, the Silo's most frequented meeting place, and the most central of its seminal apts. The workshop may serve (when Bart's entire living-space is not locked) as a social entrepot (this need 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). The workshop is also, though Bart controls its state of order, used by and on behalf of others' practical needs and innovations throughout the Silo. The workshop has four entries: two Hall doors: one at the NW end of its massive wooden wall, and this one (probably the most used). Through this entry one looks north across the workshop and via the conveyor-gap in its far wall into Bart’s three-chambered apt. There is also an unobtrusive access onto the Quay through a stepped small window at the NE corner. |
BART WORKSHOP: VIEW ACROSS
ITS LENGTH FROM ITS S-END TO THE N APT ENTRY 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 two of the enclosure’s sides (N and E) plus the ceiling and floor preceded the workshop. The floor can be viewed as a ‘plinth’ or ‘stage’ for the origination it supports. |
BART WORKSHOP:
N-END FROM CENTRE (NIGHT) At this time the Silo is being emptied - in the workshop (as elsewhere) there is a sense of dilapidation and deconstruction. Though the beauty associated with pragmatism is intact, its emotional content has biased to the plaintive (emphasising its former condition of active creativity). |
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BART WORKSHOP: VIEWED THROUGH ITS N-END DOORS (FROM STEPS DOWN INTO
CHAMBER 1) |
BART WORKSHOP: FROM ITS N-END |
BART WORKSHOP: W-SIDE ACCUMULATION A suspension-line whose load progresses from tubes and ropes to drying clothes. Beyond its far end and to the left is the second door-entry from the Hall. |
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BART WORKSHOP: W-WALL A fantastic mêlée, but patterned like a Poussin. |
BART WORKSHOP: W-WALL
& 'BULL' SCULPTURE (pic 6-94 / to SW) |
BART WORKSHOP: E-SIDE |
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BART WORKSHOP: E-SIDE WALL WITH KITCHEN/BATHROOM ENTRY |
BART: KITCHEN/BATHROOM ALONG THE WORKSHOP'S E-SIDE (pic 9-93 / to NNW) |
BART: KITCHEN/BATHROOM ALONG THE WORKSHOP'S E-SIDE |
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BART WORKSHOP: N-END EXIT TO THE THREE
DOMESTIC CHAMBERS OF HIS APT Looking from the workshop’s N-exit down steps into Bart's 3-chambered apt, across the first chamber (a general living-room and sitting-place) and through the curtained entry to the second (a bedroom and wood-store), to a distant glimpse of the third (a store and mezzanine sit-place). The luxurious curtains were found in a church skip. The beauty of their 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 living-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).
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BART
APT'S BELL-PULL ON THE SILO'S SECOND DIJK DOOR The Silo's second Dijk door opens into the Silo's chamber-1(N) and faces Bart's apt-entry. The bell-lever's knob is wearing a groove in the brick and its cable is cutting the arch. This cable threads the entry passage, crosses the Gang, enters the apt's chamb-1 facade and chimes a church bell that hangs just inside. |
BART
APT CHAMBER-1:
GANG ENTRY FACADE Bart's apt-entry facade of skipped doors and windows faces up the ramp to the Silo's second Dijk entry door. This delicate facade, walling the space between the massive ends of transverse silo walls, includes one of the round topped Norderkirk windows (which also front Milou's bedroom-mezzanine [Ref: previous page]. |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1:
INTERIOR - W-END MUSIC AREA WITH GANG FACADE AT FAR END The apt's gang entry door is open, offering a view of the short ramp to the (also open) door onto the Dijk (the Silo's 2nd Dijk entry). Hanging just inside Bart's door is a bronze church bell rung via a cable to the Dijk-door bell-pull.
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BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: CENTRE - WORKSHOP ENTRY & W-END MUSIC DESK (NIGHT) |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: CENTRE - WORKSHOP ENTRY |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: CENTRE - WORKSHOP ENTRY & QUAY DOOR |
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END SIT-PLACE ( FROM CENTRE) |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: E-END SIT-PLACE, PAST WORKSHOP ENTRY, TO W-END GANG FACADE |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: E-END SIT-PLACE, TO W-END GANG FACADE |
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: CENTRE - STOVE (NIGHT) 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 |
BART
APT
CHAMBER-1: STOVE & E-END FIREPLACE (FROM WORKSHOP ENTRY)
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END FIREPLACE
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END FIREPLACE
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - FIREPLACE DETAIL |
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - SIT-PLACE 'BAROQUE' COUCH
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - SIT-PLACE (pic 9-95 / to NE) |
BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - SIT-PLACE
WITH VISITOR BOAT 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'! |
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BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - QUAY DOOR OPEN - VIEW OUT |
BART
APT CHAMBER-1: E-END - QUAY DOOR LOCK |
BART
APT CHAMBER-1: EXTERIOR - QUAY DOOR OPEN |
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BART
APT: QUAY TERRACE - CATS Bart's ginger cat "Turbo" survived a fall from Attic-level and has since spent much time in small cozy containers. |
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CHAMBER 2: BED & WOOD-STORE
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.
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BART APT: ENTRY TO
CHAMBER-2 (SEEN ACROSS CHAMBER-1 FROM THE WORKSHOP N-EXIT) Standing in the workshop's exit into chamber-1 facing the curtained entry into chamber-2 and -3. The soft (velvet-like) curtains were skipped by a church. The beauty of their syncopated gesturing is so clear and pure because it is 'unarranged' - like so much else in the Silo it results from an action that is purely practical convenience, physical and 'blind', unstressed by difficult-to-reconcile 'designer' concerns such as 'style'. and 'harmony'. |
BART APT
CHAMBER-2: EXIT INTO CHAMBER-1
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BART APT
CHAMBER-2: WITH BED MEZZANINE 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. |
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BART APT
CHAMBER-2: WITH BED MEZZANINE (NIGHT) |
BART APT
CHAMBER-2: ON THE BED MEZZANINE |
BART APT
CHAMBER-2 & ENTRY INTO CHAMBER-3 |
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CHAMBER 3: UTILITY, STORE, MEZZANINE SITTING-PLACE
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 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.
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BART APT
CHAMBER-2: VIEW INTO CHAMBER-3 |
BART APT
CHAMBER-2 ENTRY INTO CHAMBER-3 |
BART APT CHAMBER-3: VIEW TO WEST END MEZZANINE |
< 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 |
