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the SITE AND APPROACH TO ENTRY

SILO FROM NORTH BANK OF THE IJ (DISTELWEG FERRY PORT)   (pic 6-94 / to SW)	SOUTH END FROM THE STENENHOOFD (pic 8-95 / to NNW)	EAST FACADE FROM THE STENENHOOFD (pic 8-95 / to W)
WEST FACADE FROM THE HOUTHAVENS (pic 8-95 / to EES)	THE SILO & ITS DIJK FROM THE NEW-SILO'S TOWER: [L7] JAROEN'S APT (pic 9-94 / to N) Westerdoksdijk, with its attached Graan-Silo, juts out between the Houthavens and the Ij.  From here we see the S-half of this symmetrical building. In its centre is the "Pyramid", the Silo's 'head-house' and loft of the "Museum", for grain distribution to the silos via the long Attics. Much of these huge shallow and leaking Attic roofs were re-covered by the Collective between 19## and ##.	THE SILO'S DIJK FROM THE NEW-SILO'S TOWER ROOF [L8] (pic 9-94 / to NNW)
THE IJ ON "SAIL" DAY FROM THE NEW-SILO (pic 8-95 / to SSE) "Sail" day - viewed from the New-Silo L5 charging floor's exterior walkway.	A VIEW FROM THE NEW-SILO'S TOWER ROOF [L8] TOWARDS THE CITY (pic 9-94 / to SSE) The view from the the New Silo's highest level - over its attic roof and along Westerdoksdijk towards the city center, includes: [top-lft] Het Ij water; [top-rt] Westerdok fringed by the long squatted shed De Loods with its quay and dock; [bot-rt] entry to the Silos' dijk; [mid-lft] the Stenenhoofd: an incomplete and abandoned jetty.	THE SILOS FROM THE STREET (pic 6-94 / to N) The Silos viewed from Westerdoksdijk - just before it transforms from street to industrial peninsula.
THE ROAD ENTRY TO THE SILOS' PORTION OF THE DIJK (pic 8-10-93 / to NNE) Entry to the Silos' portion of Westerdoksdijk - first past the 1950's 'New-Silo', then through the gate of the 1896 Silo, and on to the end of the narrow peninsula..	WEST FACADE FROM THE HOUTHAVENS' SOUTH-EAST CORNER (pic 8-95 / to N) Only from the Houthavens can the huge length of the old Silo be appreciated	ENTRY GATE ONTO THE OLD SILO'S DIJK (pic 6-94 / to NNE) The broad cobbled surface of the railwayed dijk fronts the cliff-like brick facade of the old Silo.

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the DIJK

THE DIJK FROM NEAR THE OLD SILO'S ENTRY GATE (pic 9-94 / to N) The Dijk narrows into the distance flanked by inventions both frivilous and practical: a metal tree with mirror leaves, a flag, brazier, enormous wooden totem, a mobile 'tram', an improvised stair, a chicken hutch, a customised camper-van, Huub's lamps, little sitting places, the entry to the Kroeg cafe.	THE DIJK FACADE NEAR THE SILO'S CENTRE (pic 8-95 / to NE) Near the centre of the Dijk facade, before one walks under the 'Slurf', is the Silo's blue private entry door (always locked when not in immediate use). Steps are propped beneath the Slurf, up to the semi-public Art Gallery. The Slurf's top is terraced and planted by the resident of its facing apt. A huge tarp is spread on the cobbles.	THE DIJK MAIN ENTRY DOOR 51 (pic 3-10-93 / to EES)
THE DIJK CHICKEN HUTCH UNDER THE SLURF (pic 6-94 / to W)	THE DIJK CHICKEN HUTCH (pic 6-94 / to WWN)	A SITTING PLACE & HUUB'S LAMPS ON THE DIJK NEAR SIMONA APT'S WINDOW-EXIT (pic 6-94 / to SE)
THE DIJK FACADE FROM NEAR THE NORTH END (pic 1993 / to SE)	THE DIJK PASSES THE NORTH END HOUSE (pic 6-94 / to N)	THE DIJK PAST THE SILO'S NORTH END  (pic 8-93 / to SE) Seen from the dijk the Silo's north end is a jumble of disparate structures. Built in the 1950s against the Silo's N-wall is the North-Tower, housing a huge vertical installation for valeting grain. North of that are two functionally separate buildings: on the quayside is the erstwhile vacuum-pumping house (now the collective's public cafe-bar, the Kroeg); on the dijk side is a conventional house built for essential on-site staff (now occupied by an independent squatter).
WESTERDOKSDIJK NORTH OF THE SILO (pic 11-97 / to SSE) At the Silo's northern end its railed and cobbled frontage becomes an earth and gravel path.	WESTERDOKSDIJK NORTH OF THE SILO (pic 11-97 / to NNW) Westerdokdijk's northern tip.

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the QUAY

I have a problem where to place the Quay in this account. Though an aspect of the Silo and its site as essential as the Dijk, it is such an integral part of the private Silo, so unaccessable to strangers, that I have decided to show it as a part of the Silo's "PRIVATE CIRCULATION", which is the main subject of the next page: "the GROUND FLOOR".

The Quay is the exterior component (and in two cases: the otherwise isolated S-Tower and the New-Silo - the only connector) of all the Silos' domestic circulations. It functions as a second 'gang' joining all the water-fronting entrances and thus every internal route; its upper portion is sometimes used (especially by those whose apts have quay-doors) for recreation and small gardens; its lower portion is a private mooring place for the boats of residents and their visiting friends.

SILO QUAY: N-END - THE KROEG'S QUAY  (pic 11-97 / to NNW)	SILO QUAY: FROM CHAMBER 5(S) (pic 11-97 / to NNW)	SILO QUAY & DUKDALF FROM CHAMBER 6(S) (paste-up x2 pics 11-97 / to N)

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THE SQUATTING
[ NB: THIS ACCOUNT OF THE SQUATTING AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PRESENT CONDITIONS IS AN AVERAGE OF SURPRISINGLY DIVERGENT MEMORIES - TO ASCERTAIN THE ‘FACTS’ WILL NEED A SIFTING OF THE VERENIGING ARCHIVE ]

The Silo Company abandoned the site in 1986, after which the Old Silo was briefly occupied by a few unpaid company-approved ‘anti-squatters’ (a compliant squatter sub-species installed by building owners to pre-empt invasion by the more politically or domestically determined). They were confined to the rooms off the central stair: the offices and lab (the only location in the building made to serve human needs before those of grain or machines); they are said to have found the huge bizarre rat-ridden dust-drowned creaking building “uncomfortable”. Lacking the incentive to exercise that expressive ‘free-will’ that is the raison-d’être of living in such a place, they consequently abandoned it (having achieved nothing). About a year later the Silo was squatted.

The two Princengracht sqats: “Boelgakov” (a late 17^thC warehouse, now "yuppie housing") and “Bührmann” (a factory now destroyed) were threatened with eviction and small groups from each joined to squat the Silo.On the afternoon of May 28^th 1989 a small invasion, planned in Bührmann that morning, arrived at the Old-Silo in two boats, prized open the central rear door (and lost their jemmy in 9m of quay water) - 8 to 10 people entered, some 12 gathered later (memories differ!).

They took the central-stair rooms - home of the anti-squatters (gas and water worked and the rooms were almost clean).  They organised a rota to live there and guard - by day there would be six to ten, at night perhaps four to six on the floor in sleeping-bags, (in the summer there was often only one). The Company had separated-off their ‘anti-squatter reservation’ from the adventure of the rest of the building: the stair-top was locked and the great galleries of the ground-floor closed by flimsy partitions - behind them it was “very dark and sinister” though one could “walk through and see all”: a multitude of wooden tubes hung from steel ceiling-pipes, there were “millions of moths” and thick dust was everywhere, one could “see rats all over the place, they were not afraid at all” (they peacefully co-existed until it was cleaned, then left).

That spring they cleaned the building - a task that (it was said) was inevitably a commitment test! - many boatloads of dust were ferried to the incinerator opposite the Silo. That summer the energetic and resourceful Mirjam - insisting that the Silo put itself on Amsterdam’s mental map immediately - organised (with two male helpers) “Exilo”, an extraordinary event that is still remembered by many who have never revisited the site. ‘All’ the artists of Amsterdam were invited to use the Silo as a venue for work and ‘all’ the rest of Amsterdam to participate. Groups of visitors were "led through the building on DADA-like tours".  The whole Silo was open - a vast extension of the art-installations and performances: building of living-spaces had hardly begun to obscure its volumes - people unconnected with it still tell experiences that I’m sure are less memories of architecture than fantasies provoked by the astonishing scale and exposure to spaces and structures afforded by unrestricted access to catwalks, the rims of huge pits, towers of pierced stairs, thickets of fragmented machinery. 

The Old Silo was a resource-mine, especially of metal. As the building was cleared and its installations dismantled, materials and objects were released for use and sale: “boats full of metal...[especially unweldable cast-iron]...were sold to scrap-dealers”; the useful and “beautiful pieces were kept” [MILOU] - “for a few years all the ground-floor store-spaces were full of metal” (as well as machines, ladders, tools, chains, belting, etc.).

Wood was needed immediately for repair and conversion, and increasingly for apartment building and heating. Much was fished from the water; local housing demolitions provided structural timbers, planks, doors and windows; terminal squats (Boelgakov and Bührmann especially, before the summer ‘90 evictions) were stripped of useful, memorable and beautiful things.  

“First conquer the place!” [DIDERIK] ... from mid ‘89 through 1990/91 the Silo slowly trans-formed from work-camp to a working ‘village’. Through summer '89 until november (spurred by the Electric Company's ultimatum) Marcel organised the huge task of tracing and rewiring all the Silo's circuits with scavenged cable (for this achievement he was accepted by the Collective). In autumn '89 they planned the building's divisions and “walked round choosing spaces”, and began converting the vacuum-pumping house at the north water-corner into a public restaurant-bar (the “Kroeg” - opened in 1990). By summer '90 Marcel had domesticated the bizarre South Drying Tower. In spring ‘90 the arrival of Brian “brought a new kind of energy into the place” [MILOU]. A prime-mover in the domestication of the forbidding “Iron-Tower” (the North Drying Tower) - with Mark its first occupier he cleared the bulk of its huge metal installations, a feat of ruthless resourcefulness and sustained work that by summer ‘91 enabled five habitable levels.

By the end of 1990 about half the Silo’s potential living-spaces were claimed (though many working there still lived outside).  Each of its distinct environments had attracted its ‘appropriate’ inhabitants - in the open attics, the massively bulwarked cavities of the ground-floor, both machine-filled drying-towers, even in the small ‘gothic’ “Round-Tower”, apt building was in progress.

The Silo squat was already registered with the City as a legal entity: the ‘Vereniging tot behoud van de Graan-Silo’ (“Collective to preserve the Grain-Silo”), with Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer, and an office. Many applied to join the now famous enterprise, wanting living- or working-spaces - finding they must build their own some went away - of those accepted some failed to realise their conception or prevaricated (sometimes for months before being told to move-in or go).  Everyone who joined paid 100 guilders per month into a common fund for bills, repairs, materials.

By the end of ‘91 this extraordinary co-operative enterprise was securely established - though still in an early stage of ‘communal’ energy, still needing or retaining the habits of a collective.  Much more than now [1996] the place was socially and physically open, less closed by substantial apartment walls and immersion in private aims; there was more participation in the Silo’s ethos and events, people would take pleasure in sharing work, simple tasks like foraging in the streets for firewood were social occasions. The Silo was increasingly opening to public participation. By december '93 Marcel had made his most radical contribution to the collective's domain by enabling the neighbouring New-Silo for regular public use - for internally and externally organised art and 'rave' events. In '9# the "Silo Galerie" [for internal and external art shows] was opened in the vertical-conveyor room under the 'Slurf' and in '9# Milou et al established the "Silo-Theatre". By '9# the Silo's participation was a substantial portion of Amsterdam's annual festival "Parade".

Today [1996] the Silo is home for 40 people and work-space for a few who live outside. All types of skills are represented - only a quarter are artists, performers, designers. There are 33 private spaces from small to huge - most are elaborate apartments that often include workshop/studio-space (which tends to diminish as domestic functions evolve); in at least 2 the workshop almost completely eclipses domestic provisions; only 3 are pure studios. The Old Silo is comprehensively but not fully occupied: the community has stabilised at a number of individuals too few to need to utilise all easily habitable spaces (let alone the daunting possibility of converting the windowless silo-cavities!).  There are still large spaces used only as stores; the upper halves of the ground-floor’s high access/workshop/store chambers could accommodate small apts (a ‘small-scale model’ is Simona’s living-room in Duro Toomato’s store-space); and under extreme population-pressure certain very large apts/workshops could divide and differentiate (a process ‘sketched’ in Milou Veling’s internal ‘guest-house’).  The results of a population expansion such as followed Tetterode’s legalisation are far less predictable in the topographically awkward Silo - it would effect a ‘transformation’ rather than Tetterode’s simple multiplication of divisions.  At present [1996] many apts are still evolving and there are unresolved Collective projects (such as the use of the New-Silo).  The largest uncertainty concerns the future of the whole site: an ongoing discussion with various City institutions [1].  

THE FORM OF THE BUILDINGS

The site began in 1907 with the building of Jacob Klinkhamer’s 1892 designed “Old Silo” and was extended in the 1950’s with a massive concrete “New Silo”.

The Old Silo’s brick and wood structure is inherently complex and has accumulated internal modifications and external additions, whereas the New Silo’s reinforced-concrete and steel spaces are simple and vast - however apart from such historical differences the two buildings are similar in essentials of operation and form. The Old Silo however is as if ‘doubled’: as if two equal and opposite Silos are face to face sharing at the centre the facilities associated with the New Silo’s tower: vertical conveyors and access stairs (and the whole site's admin offices).

Since I’m more concerned with the results of the occupation than the original use of the buildings, the account below concentrates on the completely inhabited Old Silo rather than the sparsely used New Silo (briefly described in relation to its rave-venue basement and single apt). 

In spite of his obsession with building for industry (“Industrial buildings are the new sacred buildings”) Klinkhamer, like most 19thC architects, is lost in the pictorial and ignores the drama of the actual (industrial) activity.  Except for a sense of some large-scale internal physical action conveyed by the towering blankness of its facades and the flowering emergence on them of 1300-plus steel reinforcing-rod rosettes - he disguises his Silo’s intensely active mechanism-dominated interior behind a tableau of ‘Chateau-Gothique’ and takes no design-responsibility for installations (pneumatic elevators, etc.) that deface and penetrate its walls.

Of all the actions associated with valeting grains, that of storage dominates the building’s form. In each of its wings, between their attics and their ground floor, is an 18m-deep volume of silos - two vast ‘crates’ of (in total) 120 brick cells criss-crossed by reinforcing rods (to prevent the thin walls of the filled ones bulging and bursting). All around the vertical perimeters of these central blocks of storage-cavities were the devices and machines that served them and the grain: the motors and pumps, hoppers and bins, sievers, dryers, cyclone-cleaners, weighers, baggers, and of course transporters: horizontal band-conveyors, vertical bucket-conveyors, and in every direction, pipes (“chutes”) and ducts.

To empty and fill the ships and barges suction derricks (“pneumatic ship-unloaders”) projected from the water-front facade (one still droops its hose next to the Kroeg) or floated independently, serving large ships moored outside the duckdalfs.  Grain sucked from ships was poured through feed-hoppers to conveyors running beneath the quay - routed to the New Silo; to the stacked dryers and cleaners in the Old Silo’s end towers, or bucket-elevated up its centre into the surmounting pyramid and poured through its ‘distributor’ onto the conveyors of the great central loft, driven out into the attics of the wings to fill from above the ranks of silos, to be later discharged 18m beneath onto the conveyors in the caverns of the ground-floor.  

The Silo is formed differently from the other three buildings in this book - Tetterode, De Loods, Edelweis were built to house rather than embody the purposes they serve. Though industrial - Tetterode's grouped buildings enclose conventional stacks of floors: workshops for machine-assisted production - the whole place is primarily a human environment. The Silo - doing nothing so complicated as manufacture: simply serving a raw-material - is an object half-way between say 'crane' and 'factory': it is almost as if just one of the machines on Tetterode's workshop floors had expanded into a building which contains its human operators as working-parts.

SILO - LONG SECTION [to EEN]  /  CROSS SECTION [to SSE]  /  PLAN GROUND-FLOOR [top EEN] (original-drawings: Klinkhamer, et al - 11-1896) [annotated ver]

SILO PRE-SQUAT: BETWEEN 1900 & 1910 (pic between 1900 & 1910 / to NNE) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) The main building, designed by Jacob Klinkhamer in 1896, demonstrates typical 19thC disjunction of 'architecturally-styled' parts & 'merely-functional' parts!. The small cubic addition at the near end (south) was probably added between 1900 & 1910; in the 1940s(?) it was crudely heightened to house a vertical grain dryer-stack.	SILO PRE-SQUAT: N END DOCK & QUAY IN 1930's (pic: 1930's / to N) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) The space where the 1950's New Silo would be built (possibly mistakenly positioned !) was then apparantly a dock for barges. There is a bucket-elevator mounted (incongrously) on the 'gothique' Corner-Tower. Huge 'pneumatic ship-unloaders' - scaled to the biggest ships - float outside the 'dukdalfs'.	SILO PRE-SQUAT: VACUUM-PUMP IN THE PRESENT KROEG SITE (pic: 10-1987 / to SE) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) In the space that is now the "Kroeg" this huge machine made vacuum for the suction derricks of the quay. Its big (about 4.5m) flywheel spun between two pumps mounted on brick plinths.  When the Silo was squatted it had already been removed by the building's owners.
SILO PRE-SQUAT: GROUND-FLOOR GRAIN-CONVEYORS (pic: 10-1987 / to S ) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) This is now the north Gang, viewed towards the south from 'chamber-8'. The grain conveyors were then in open troughs and though the massive silo-supporting walls encumbered the volume of the huge sunken hall no apt-walls cut portions from its continuity.  The overhead silos discharged through valved metal pipes whose flow was directed to the conveyor by movable wooden chutes.	SILO PRE-SQUAT: CENTRE-ATTIC GRAIN 'DISTRIBUTOR'  (pic: 10-1987 / to W) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) This huge central attic is named the "Museum" for displaying the grotesque remains of installations such as this central feature - a 'distributor'. This structure of chutes directed grain from the "Pyramid" loft above onto 4 conveyors that transported it through the North and South Attics.	SILO PRE-SQUAT: CENTRE-ATTIC GRAIN CONVEYORS (pic: 10-1987 / to SW) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) Here one of the two South-Attic conveyors rises from the 'distributor' and passes into the 1.8m raised Attic through an entry port in the "Museum's" south wall .
SILO PRE-SQUAT: ATTIC GRAIN-CONVEYORS (pic: 10-1987 / to N/S(?) ) - (pic: Municipal Archives Amsterdam) The Attics of the north and south wings are the silos' 'charging-floors'. Here the conveyors that emerged from the "Museum" discharged their grain into the tops of the 120 silos. Conveyors were looped through rail-travelling 'throw-off carrages' [pic cntr] that diverted their grain into the flanking silo openings.

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THE SHAPE OF THE OCCUPATION

Only round the edges of the un-inhabitable silo cavities, in the spaces once used by the machines that served them, and in the admin offices of the central stair, was occupation possible - only these spaces had provisions for humans: stairs, floors and windows, and could be made habitable or at least suitable for apartment building without major structural additions. Except for twinned apts in the spacious offices, the narrowness of the building and the needs of access precluded more than a single line of living-spaces. Thus the curious form of the occupation is emphasised - like an ant-burrow exhibited between planes of glass, constrained to grow as a two-dimensional shape - tracing the vertical edges of the building’s two rectangular wings: passing up the stair between them, travelling across their tops in the low wooden attics, bracketing their ends inside the bizarre drying towers, and infesting their dark and massive ground-floors. A vertical linear-village of environmentally distinct mini-regions, whose simple overall shape is most easily apprehended from outside. Touring the interior it’s difficult to remember the building’s symmetry and repetitiveness - distracted by the ad hoc opportunism and individualism of the occupation and surprised by intrusive fragments of machine-installations as senseless as semi-buried ruins.  

QUAY FACADE FROM THE STENENHOOFD (pic 8-95 / to W) The forbidding concrete 1950’s “New Silo” is a venue for public raves and art events sporting only a single apt at the peak of its tower. The 1896 old Silo, squatted in 1989, is fully domesticated: apts infest the narrow 'caves' of the ground-floor, some opening glazed doors onto its narrow quay; fill its central 'tower' of offices; line its light-filled attics; climb its end-bracketing drying-towers, and a single apt fills the round tower at the SE corner. The great central hollow volumes of the storage silos remain unused.	QUAY FACADE FROM THE STENENHOOFD - SOUTH HALF (paste-up x2 pics 9-94 / to W) South wing (with its Ground-Floor and Attic apts), Corner-Tower, S-Tower (behind Corner-Tower).	QUAY FACADE FROM THE STENENHOOFD - NORTH HALF (pic 9-94 / to W) Central-Stair and offices, Museum and Pyramid, north wing (with its Ground-Floor and Attic apts), N-Tower, Kroeg (cafe).
SILO EXTERIOR: THE DIJK FACADE FROM NEAR THE NORTH END} (pic 9-94 / to SE) The towering metal-studded walls hide an uninhabitable central volume of grain storage cavities (the ‘silos’). Beneath them is the semi-sunken Ground-Floor into which they were discharged; across their tops are long wooden Attics from which they were filled; in the building's centre, dividing the silos into two wings of 60 each, were the admin offices and the Central-Stair.	INSIDE A ‘SILO’ (“HORST’S SILO”) - VIEW UP FROM BASE (pic 6-94 / to SSW?) View up inside one of the 120 storage-silos (approx. 3·5m square and 18m high). A typical silo - except for an entry hole cut through the heavily reinforced ground-floor ceiling; the removal of innumerable reinforcing rods (that minimise distortion of the thin brick walls when filled with grain), and the wooden platform under construction at its peak. This latter Horst intended as a music-room, utilising the silo’s special acoustics - he began this (now abandoned) project in 1992 before he moved into the N-Tower. [This silo is entered from Ground-S Chamber-6: ERNST studio]

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THE DOMESTIC DOMAINS 

The following pages mainly explore the Silos' private domains. Public access to the site is limited to the Dijk; the cafe (De Kroeg), its toilets and its fronting portion of the Quay; the Art Gallery under the Slurf; occasional festivals on the dijk and in the Kroeg; very rare 'open days' when the interior can be explored; art-performances in the New-Silo and weekend rave events in its basement. Some of these public events and their environments are shown in the last two sections: 'THE PUBLIC SILO & THE KROEG' and 'NEW-SILO - PUBLIC & PRIVATE'. 

Unlike the other domesticated sites described in this web-book (Tetterode, De Loods, Edelweis) the Silos can be perceived as single machines whose functioning parts are the building's differing 'zones'. Each of these functional zones afforded and imposed different opportunities and conditions on their utilisation for domestication and work - they are shown as follows:

1   GROUND-FLOOR - HALL / SOUTH and NORTH WINGS

From its central Hall (main Silo entry from the fronting dijk and nexus of interior routes) the semi-sunken Ground floors spread south and north beneath the silos. Massively divided transverse chambers are cut by longditudional conveyor-paths: the 'Gangs', now bordered by apt facades, workshops and stores.

2   CENTRAL-STAIR

Rising at the east side of the Hall is the eccentric wooden corkscrew of the Central-Stair that joins the 'under-silos' Ground to the 'over-silos' Attics; its landings served the Company offices (the sites of earliest occupation). Like the cable of a buoy It strings the heavy steel entry Hall to the central Attic hollow of the "Museum".

3   ATTICS - "MUSEUM" and "PYRAMID" / SOUTH and NORTH ATTICS

From the central "Museum" and its surmounting "Pyramid" (the Silo's 'head-house') the North and South Attics spread over the now empty silos like wings ... 'as if supported in the air by the spirit and complexity of their apts'.

4   DRYING-TOWERS - NORTH and SOUTH

These towers, packed with industrial installations yet now domesticated, bracket the ends of the centrally-joined upper Attic and lower Ground floor zones, and serve to complete a double ring of apts.

5   "CORNER-TOWER"

A 'castle tower' juts from the Silo's southeast corner - an architectural folly, inhabited by a man alone in a his tube of round rooms. Entered up a ladder to its mouth-like door and vacated at its base via a hole hacked through a wall.

6   NEW-SILO TOWER-APT  

Domestic intervention in the New-Silo began only when the Old-Silo was already almost filled with established living places - in 1994 an isolated apt was started in the top chamber of its conveyor-tower. This 'just-begun' first-construction-phase apt is shown in the context of the New-Silo as a whole.

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AN ENVIRONMENT OF PSYCHO-PHYSICAL AFFECTS

DANGER, SPACE, VITALITY 

The Silo is a zone of traps - minor and major hazards from a bruise to death - a bruised head from a low steel lintel to tripping on a proud board and plunging 20 metres through a gap in the room’s floor!  The threat of danger - at least before complete familiarity with the terrain (which however is always changing in at least small ways) - makes one attend to ones body, its movements and surroundings, adding a dimension of awareness unusual in habitual living - a state of enhanced sensations and vitality of being.  There are indications that some at least enjoy the hazards - retaining open deadly ducts and holes, unprotected hoist-shafts, absent portions of floor, spidery and insecure ladders; as well as building in bizarre locations: platforms intruding over the voids of silos, colonising towers; socialising the roofs like cats, scaling the walls - there have been accidents and falls, none fatal ! 

HOME, JUXTAPOSITIONS, DREAMS 

The acute foreground of danger tends to obscure a more subtle and pervasive sense of spatial fallibilities in this huge machine-building - disquietingly evocative of the fragility of domestic life and individuality!  For example: 

In the great wooden lofts under the marvellous roof, where deep-beamed galleon-like apartments span the width in a relaxing amplitude, one never quite loses a sense of ‘suspension near the sky’ as if the whole floor is airship-hung, a hovering plane.  The solidity and comfort of these homes, the massive assurance of their steel-strapped beams and concrete floors cannot quite dispel a sense of magic - as if they are held out over nothing like a gift or dream. 

Across their floors orderly lines of pierced steel floor-plates (stuffed with draught-excluding foam or sealed with tape) can thinly open into the deep brick cavities of silos - seen with domestic eyes seemingly monstrous constructions made for nothing but emptiness (unless one has unluckily inherited the few with rotting grain).They are not analogues of ‘drains’ or ‘under-floor cavities’: those are extensions of the sink and house - these cavities are nothing at all to do with the houses built on the top of their ’charging-floor’ (where huge band-conveyors ran feeding these holes) - a palpable physical, functional, historical gap separates them; but visually and mentally they conjoin: thus the psyche is thrown into ‘shock’ - used to coherent objects it gropes for a reason commensurate with the vision, and finding none begins to ‘dream’! The proximity of these bizarre, irrational, primitive gulfs concealed beneath the surface layer of dwellings and waking needs of living, inevitably provokes ‘symbolic perception’: a sense of the insecurity of the thin skin of consciousness over the great dark beneath (the two places that are merged in the lost places of Piranesi’s ‘Prisons’). 

In the apartments and spaces of the lowest level beneath the silos one may become aware of a contrasting sensation: an oppression from above (or at least the preparations to resist it) - a continual effort of support expressed by the thick-walled caverns of grain-supporting masonry.  The overbearing silos (18 meter hollows up to the floors of the sky-touching lofts) protrude through the close-girdered ceilings as rows of scarlet discharge-tubes: one dribbles a tar with a smell of breweries evaporated to an unquenchable pungency; others spill a thin stream of grain and scurrying beetles, or spurt water when rain falls through the outer silos from the broken tiles of the lateral roofs.  Attempts to seal the flows are often overwhelmed: yellow fungi of polystyrene foam bulge from the tube-mouths, suspended buckets discretely cup yawning tube-ends, or collecting bags are held bound around the throats of tubes with tourniquets of tape and wire, determined to suspend the weight of disgorge.  All reinforce the feeling of living under a hollow albeit active entity. 

The ubiquitous spatial disquiet is brought to a sharp focus in the drying towers at the Silo’s ends, where the dichotomy of ’cosy-homes’ and harsh industrial structures is at its most acute.  Secure within a habitation one may forget that beyond its threshold is a dizzy climb where up and down both conveyed the threat of falling among a multitude of views through the thin girders and pierced-steel stairs. 

In 3½ months residency I was not habituated to this environment which continued to demand attention, and consequent exhaustion. Lack of rest not only for the body watching for dangers, but also the mind working to make sense of context-lesions and besieged by ‘first-time objects’: the experiential hyper-activity of inventions and wit.

‘FIRST-TIME OBJECTS’ - PHYSICAL AND PSYCHIC PRESENTNESS
[‘...is there no escape from Numbers and Beings!’ - Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du Mal, “The Pit” 1862.]

‘First-time objects’ are the norm in the Silo. Things are made (and found) in a very immediate way that conveys the present-moment of the act. Continual confrontation with such active objects is exhausting. Such objects behave their being, their making, and their use - actively and continually signalling these. 

There is nothing especially ‘original’ about the majority of Silo objects and arrangements except this ‘present-momentness’ - a characteristic of things made in a ‘real-time’ state of attention/action, as economically as present means allowed.  With no style, skill, or finish excessive to the need, not only is their behavior freed: falling in their curve of gravity, warping with the visible grain, showing the impact of the hammer; but untrussed by taste and tidiness their forms are more complex unpredictable and various, more efficient projection-screens for potential fantasies. Thus the Silo is physically and psychically eventful. 

[Ref: for a fuller account of this phenomenon with analyses of examples see APPENDIX # . ... in process ]

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CONTENTS

4 SITES

SILO

TETTERODE

DE LOODS

EDELWEIS

APPENDICES

NOTES

SUB-SITES