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

"TETTERODE" SQUAT 1981-/COLLECTIVE 1986 to--   - p2-1(of 18)

TETTERODE'S RESIDENTIAL DOMAINS

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TETTERODE RESIDENTIAL DOMAINS  ... in process 

The following abbreviations are used throughout the text:

BUILDING/FLOOR LOCATION CODES (NB: these differ somewhat from those used by the Tetterode Collective): 
Main building blocks: 
dc = Dacostakade block's two buildings: mb = Dacostakade's Merkelbach building / hc = Dacostakade's Hartcamp building 
bd = Bilderdijkstraat's two buildings: bd = the Bilderdijk old building / bdN = Bilderdijk's small north-extension building  
Floor Levels:
are numbered from the ground up: L0, L1, L2, etc; from the ground down: L0-1, , . 
Additional codes: 
e = entresol (an intermediate-floor, a ½-height as it were), S = south / N = north (eg: 'bd-L1/eS' & 'bd-L1/eN' = the Bilderdijk building's south and north Entresols) // lm = "Lettermagazijn" (eg: 'bd-L1/elm' - an intermediate-floor enclave on the bd building's E side).

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THE RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS
[Written 2010--]

The next sections show residential domains, domestic enclaves and living-spaces in Tetterode factory's three main buildings. On its east side is the huge 'Dacostakade' [dc] block, consisting of two very different but joined buildings named after their designers: 'Merkelbach' [mb] and ' Hartcamp' [hc]. On its west side is the 'Bilderdijk Old' building [bd] with its originally-domestic 'satellite' enclave that penetrates offices in the adjacent 'Bilderdijk North' buildings [bdN]. 

The ground levels [L0] of the three main buildings [mb/hc/bd] are workshops, studios, businesses. Except in Merkelbach almost total domesticity begins from level-1 [L1]. Uniquely, Merkelbach's L1 is an enclave of businesses and the Collective's administration, and domestic use is represented only by a single small isolated home.

Tetterode's mode of factory production necessitated stacks of large rectangular workshop floors that access a stair at each end via lockable steel doors. Apart from Merkelbach L1 all these floors are now domestic enclaves whose locked doors open into an internal passage which serves a group of private living-spaces. Most of these are homes or homes with workspaces, a few are pure workspaces whose users sleep elsewhere, however because these latter are enclosed in an enclave and share with its other denizens its inevitable collective character, facilities and decisions, they seem - unlike the 'outsider' users of the ground-level workshops - participants in the substance of Tetterode's residential heart. 

A few independent apts have always been outside the protection of an enclave, their entry doors opening directly from the landing of a general-circulation stair. More recently, the phenomenon of expanding (family) homes - taking over spaces vacated by neighbours - has resulted in two enclaves becoming huge independent apts (both in Bilderdijk L1: the "Lettermagazijn" and the South Entresol).

The buildings are visited in the following order: 

p 2-1 - 13:  RESIDENTIAL DOMAINS:
    p 3: DA COSTAKADE: two joined buildings: 'Merkelbach' and 'Hartcamp': 
        p 4 - 6: Merkelbach 
        p 7 - 8-2: Hartcamp 
    p 9: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT: 'Old' and 'North': 
        p 10 - 12: Bilderdijk Old building 
        p 13: Bilderdijk North building  

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LIVING-SPACE TYPES  ... in process  
[Written late-90s and 2011--]

LIVING-SPACE BUILDING (IN MERKELBACH L4) (pic 8-1993 / to WWS?) An example of individualistic ad hoc planning and construction: sub-dividing a large existing living-space, (possibly for a domestic inclusion) with cement-blocks - Tetterode's ubiquitous construction material.

The common type of 'stage-2' [1] living-space unit (the 'basic' small apt or apt+studio [2]) on Tetterode's factory-height floors (which average around 4m) is a one window-bay wide simple cuboid cement-block-walled space usually differentiated only with a half-height mezzanine-platform (for sleeping or storage) at its inner entry-end, reached via more or less substantial steps. Many of Hartcamp's and Bilderdijk's L2 and L3 living-spaces were (and still are in 2008) of this type, constituting one unit or two with a connecting door (the second often a studio). Merkelbach was different - its huge live-work and apt spaces seem to retain a memory of its initially sprawling non-domestic studios. However, compared to the much broader Bilderdijk block's two upper whole-floor enclaves, which are arranged around or branch from central shared spaces, all Darcostakade's enclaves have the character of a single narrow lane - in Hartcamp usually straight, in Merkelbach more wandering.

Whatever the initial politic and practical restraints, by 1996 it was clear that (as their sense of the Collective's security mellowed) many of the inhabitants of this arena of (increasingly) free choice continued to modify and even completely renew their homes, and that the desire of some to increase the scope of their expressive domesticity would inevitably require enlargement of their living-spaces. These changes are both endemic to the place and especially stimulated by the multiplication/growth of families and the opportunity of vacated apts. These self-contained 'stage-3' homes, increasingly dissociated from their location and independent of shared facilities - tend to erode the collective social structure and ethos [3], while often reliant for their realisation on its shared skills and workshops.

Because these ‘house-like’ living-spaces (like those in EDELWEIS) were made in an ‘already-tamed’ site; in a single burst of building, often by visually aware ‘artists’, in ‘tabula rasa’ spaces; they convey a sense of ‘set-piece’ all-at-once design, which - accepting of course that at least part of the chicken must pre-empt the egg - nevertheless tend (like the mass-taste forms of ‘suburbia’ or the resolved/received objects of architecture) to specify the forms of living before it is lived and/or bring a previously ‘sketched’ apt to a sudden detailed finality [4]. This self-contained finality//completeness emphasised the strangeness of individual ‘houses’ stacked inside the cellular ‘megastructure’ of a factory [5]. Contrast these conditions and results with the youthful SILO where domestic forms accrete in step with needs and in reciprocation with the site, where scenic wonders and even inimical features stimulate an inventiveness which is (even in jokes) pragmatically expressed in ‘immediate time’, rather than considered and aesthetic.

Foot-Notes:

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This tour of residential Tetterode begins on the next page in the Dacostakade block with an account of its two buildings and their vertical routes. On subsequent pages we enter the domestic enclaves and many dwelllings - starting in Merkelbach, then Hartcamp, then the Bilderdijk block - ascending their floors from level 1.