IMPROVISED HOMES IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS

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

"TETTERODE" SQUAT 1981-/COLLECTIVE 1986 to-- - p2(of 11)

DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS [dc: mb/hc]

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TETTERODE - p2: DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: MERKELBACH & HARTCAMP

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> TETTERODE - p8: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT BUILDING >

> TETTERODE - p9: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT APTS >

> TETTERODE - p10: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT APTS >

> TETTERODE - p11: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT APTS >

> TETTERODE - p12: BILDERDIJKSTRAAT APTS >

THE DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS [dc: mb/hc]
Building/Floor Location Codes (NB: these differ somewhat from those used by the Tetterode Vereniging):
dc = Dacostakade's two buildings // mb = Dacostakade's Merkelbach (new) building // hc = Dacostakade's Hartcamp (old) building // bd = Bilderdijkstraat building.
Floor Levels are numbered from the ground up: L0, L1, L2; from the ground down: L0-1, , .
Additional code: e = entresol ( an intermediate-floor, a ‘½’ as it were), S = south / N = north (eg: 'bd-L1/eS' & 'bd-L1/eN' = the Bilderdijk building's south & north Entresols) // lm = "Lettermagazijn" (eg: 'bd-L1/elm' - an intermediate-floor enclave on the bd building's E side).

The large eastern block [dc] facing the Dacostakade canal consists of two joined buildings: the 1912 Hartkamp [hc], and the 1949 Merkelbach [mb]. The two buildings have 8 levels in common. Below ground [L0-1] are rented basement work-spaces, mainly on the Merkelbach side. Ground level [L0] is workshops in Merkelbach, the Dijk Theatre and small businesses in Hartkamp. L1 (known as the "Entresol" because of its relative shallowness) is businesses in Merkelbach, apts in Hartkamp. Above L1 both buildings have five apt floors [L2 to L6]. mb-L5 is the last lift-stop and from there one climbs to the last apt level [L6]: the mb/hc ‘penthouse’. Above this rises only a small glass ‘look-out’ and lift machinery [L7], and stair to its roof and radio tower [L8].

This whole Dacostakade side of Tetterode developed largely as one in its pre- and early-domestic phases: starting as flimsily divided artists studios, changing in the late 1980s to a live-in situation: a mix of apt and studio space divided by solid walls. Since then the buildings have diverged (curiously in tune with their architectural character). The Merkelbach [mb], a building that gives the impression of single-minded dedication to work, is still artist/studio dominated, whereas the older Hartcamp building [hc], that dallies with ‘domestic’ styles, is now socially mixed and (like the Bilderdijk [bd] block) has devolved into socially different floors, more densely occupied than Merkelbach’s, with smaller and more intricate spaces. Its less industrial character has allowed the sense of domesticity to accumulate, while the monolithic character of Merkelbach has not been contradicted.


DACOSTAKADE BUILDING: INNER FACE (pic 8-93 / to E) We are standing on the Bilderdijk [bd] block's roof viewing the inner facade of the Dacostakade [dc] block. At their N & S ends workshops link the two blocks, south of the connecting bridges they share Tetterode's enclosed courtyard. The Dacostakade block's north half, the 'Merkelbach' building [mb] & its south half, the 'Hartkamp' building [hc], share a central stair/lift from which the two bridges cross to Bilderdijk. Workshops obscure Merkelbach's ground level L0; just above their roof are the thin windows of the uniquely shallow floor L1, the so called "entresol" - in Merkelbach it is occupied by workshops & businesses, in Hartcamp by apts. Above it are L2/3/4/5: four levels of apts, studio-apts, or studios - arranged on each side (& in Merkelbach across the ends) of central passages branching from the centre stair. Over all is L6: the penthouse, its Hartkamp portion a single studio-apt, the larger Merkelbach portion divided into 3 studio-apts entered from an external terrace (a tiny & unique 'row-house' situation). Surmounting all is the tiny 'look-out' room L7 & its L8 roof with Tetterode's radio-ariel.	DACOSTAKADE BUILDING: MERKELBACH (mb) (Architect-Drawing: 19## / Section WWS to EEN)	DACOSTAKADE BUILDING: HARTCAMP (hc) (Architect-Drawing: 19## / Section WWS to EEN)

DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 01 (BASEMENT) (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 0 (GROUND) (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 1 ("ENTRESOL") (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]

DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 2 (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 3 (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 4 (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]

DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 5 (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 6 (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]	DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS: PLAN - LEVEL 7 (ROOF & "LOOKOUT") & LEVEL 8 ("LOOKOUT" ROOF) (Architect-Drawing 1986 / top is EEN) [all plans 386K]

INSIDE THE DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS

Entering at Dacostakade 158 on the edge of the old building (perhaps with a key on a kite-string thrown from a high window) one traverses a bent passage that squeezed the mis-calculated theatre-wall into a curve flanked by terminal ‘rustication’ [1] - the strange wall is flush-set with panels of face-height glass and mirror redeeming the mistake as ‘art’: the introduction to the severe and serious practicality of Merkelbach.

If one misses the lift and stair one can wander into a ground floor that is a confusion of junctions between disparate places and routes, left-overs of piecemeal enclosures (mostly of workshops), winding across the width of the site in a single-story muddle of layered bikes and ad hoc conversions strangely giving way to 1920s panelling, mirrors and marble, a silent cool empty fossil foyer opening into the traffic-roar of the Bilderdijkstraat.

The lift in its cluttered dark corner (opposite uninvitingly large stairs - they have the scale of climbing a house between each floor) stares orange out of its doors’ eyes: steel-rimmed portholes open into a blood red box lit by a tungsten bulb; heavy steel doors swing open as if to a banqueting room. One rises past the inside lips of floors and daylight-flashing ports in numbered doors.

On five lift-levels the smooth valves of the lift doors are flanked by locked and belled floor doors - riveted, with strap-hinges, severe rectangular stares and small handle-noses. Each leads into a floor-enclave: 1949 Merkelbach on the west hand, 1912 Hartcamp on the east. On these landings one can feel stranded high-up in a senseless place locked out of Tetterode’s inner life.

However once inside there is rarely the communal sense of the Bilderdijk enclaves; on all these floors a more or less straight central passage serves the living-spaces, doors to the right, left, and end. In Merkelbach especially even these inner doors are almost always closed and often locked: there is a working rather than domestic atmosphere...it feels as if the severe concrete floors/ceilings and the cement-block and boarded walls are too simple to hide rich and complex apartments, they resemble those in studio-converted warehouses or art-college studios.

Indeed in 1985 the Collective had decided to reserve Merkelbach for studios and relocate studios when vacated in other buildings...distilling domesticity. However in spite of this policy, by ‘94 Merkelbach had at least 13 living-spaces among its studios, and behind its austere inner facades are the most developed and ambitious apts in Tetterode (three are described below). After the ‘86 legalisation a ‘stick and carrot’ situation pertained: the new rents (approx 1000% rise over squat levels) and the inducement of Het Oosten’s internal renovation fund precipitated an intense period (‘87-’88) of building - except for two spaces walled in ‘85, divisions had previously been plastic curtains or flimsy wood and board, now everywhere was divided by cement-block walls. Separation of work and home was financially unsustainable - apartment construction was stimulated and the huge studio spaces differentiated internally or were simply divided into work and domestic portions.

Topping the block is Merkelbach’s highest living level (mb-L6), a steel and glass-walled ‘penthouse’ (the workers' canteen), stepped back under a shading roof and served by a railed pavement - now divided into three magnificent studio/apartments. Its 1963 extension across the Hartcamp building (a ‘directors dining-suite’) terminates at the SE end in a little glass room shaded under the slatted ‘bris-soleil’ of its extended roof, opening on a terrace rimmed with a steel ships rail - a dizzy drop into the central courtyard with its long brick chimney rising up and past - now a grass lawn strewn with a child’s toys and edged with flowers (a ‘suburban garden’ absurdly high above the domestic roof-tops of the Kinkerstraat). Almost since the squat’s inception the glass room has been the bedroom of Frank April, and the adjoining ‘dining-room’, now a single vast decor-stripped space with an oil-drum wood-stove (the last of this early type), his studio/living-room. The little “sky-garden” is a Collective place.

Between these two wings of the ‘penthouse’ an elegant steel stair twists up into a tiny glass pavilion like the ‘look-out’ of an airship, furnished with mats and empty wine bottles. Outside and higher still up steel steps, one stands on its head: at 31 metres Tetterode’s final platform but not its highest point - here a 12½ metre lattice radio transmission mast rises and the whole horizon of Amsterdam surrounds it.

Foot-Notes :

It was said that it took “half a year” to mutually decide to re-build the wall “five centimetres back” to allow access through the passage for trolley-carts!

DACOSTAKADE CIRCULATION - MERKELBACH AND HARTCAMP BUILDINGS' CENTRE ENTRY AND STAIR/LIFT


DACOSTAKADE L0: ENTRY PASSAGE TO CENTRE STAIR/ LIFT - WITH REBUILT THEATRE WALL (pic 8-93 / to EES) ... in process	DACOSTAKADE L0/L1: CENTRE STAIR/LIFT HALF-LANDING - FROM L0 ENTRY PASSAGE TO L1 (NIGHT) (pic 8-93 / to E)	DACOSTAKADE L1: CENTRE STAIR L1 LANDING (pic 12-4-2006 / to SW)

DACOSTAKADE L3: CENTRE STAIR/ LIFT L3 LANDING (NIGHT) (pic 8-93 / to E) The lift's double-door faces us, the left double-door is Merkelbach L3 enclave. The right opening accesses the door of Hartcamp L3 enclave.	DACOSTAKADE: CENTRE LIFT - INTERIOR (pic 8-93 / to NE) in process (sub col vid-fr?)	DACOSTAKADE: CENTRE LIFT - INTERIOR REWIRED LAMP (pic 8-93 / to S) An economical adaptation: the lift lamp is used as a kind of glass pot in which stands a (fragile) flourescent tube, wired to the bulb terminals.

DACOSTAKADE L3: BRIDGE TO THE BILDERDIJK BUILDING - ACCESSED FROM L3 LANDING (pic 8-93 / to WWS) The upper of the two bridges that connect the two residential blocks.	DACOSTAKADE L5: CENTRE STAIR L5 LANDING (pic 24-9-2007 / to SW)	DACOSTAKADE L6: CENTRE STAIR L6 LANDING - WITH STAIR TO L7 'LOOKOUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to S) Past the small steel enclosure of the spiral-stair up to the L7 'look-out' room, is the door [pic: left] into Merkelbach's 'penthouse' (the directors' dining room), now Frank April's living-space & studio.

DACOSTAKADE L6 / L7 / L8: EXTERIOR (pic [© Connie] 12-05 / to S) Upper levels: Merkelbach's L6 'penthouse' with its surrounding terrace; the L7 'look-out' room, & (via its external stair) its L8 roof-terrace with Tetterode radio station's ariel.	DACOSTAKADE L6: MERKELBACH'S 'PENTROUSE' TERRACE FROM L6 LANDING EXIT (pic 8-93 / to NNE)	DACOSTAKADE L6/L7: STAIR FROM L6 LANDING UP TO L7 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to S)

DACOSTAKADE L7: STAIR DOWN TO L6 LANDING FROM 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to SSE) Merkelbach's steel & glass enclosed stair to his little 'look-out' room.	DACOSTAKADE L7: STAIR DOWN TO L6 LANDING FROM 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (vid-frame 8-93 / to SSE) Looking through Merkelbach's glazed stair enclosure across the roof of Hartcamp's wing of the Merkelbach 'penthouse'.	DACOSTAKADE L7: 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to EEN) Beyond the 'pillar'-chimney is an exit to the Merkelbach building's main roof & a stair up to the 'look-out' room's roof-terrace.

DACOSTAKADE L7: 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to EES) The 'look-out' room seen through the open door to Merkelbach's main roof.	DACOSTAKADE L8: ROOF-TERRACE OF 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM (pic 8-93 / to EEN) From Tetterode's highest level - a view over the central-city.	DACOSTAKADE L8: ROOF-TERRACE OF 'LOOK-OUT' ROOM - THE RADIO MAST (vid-frame 8-93 / to WWS)

DACOSTAKADE CIRCULATION - HARTCAMP BUILDING'S SOUTH ENTRY AND STAIR/LIFT


DACOSTAKADE L0: HARTCAMP ENTRY LOBBY OF THE SOUTH STAIR & LIFT-SHAFT (pic 12-4-2006 / to E)	DACOSTAKADE L0: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR & LIFT-SHAFT - VIEW UP FROM ENTRY LOBBY (pic 8-93 / pic-top to W) The redundant lift with its surrounding stair. Our view up encounters two obstructions: at L2 a ledge of floor projects into the shaft supporting a spiral stair to an office in the upper half of L2's landing; at L3 the shaft is floored for store-space. The stair finally reaches L6, the highest level of the Hartcamp building.	DACOSTAKADE L1: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR VIEW DOWN LIFT-SHAFT TO L0 LOBBY (pic 12-4-2006 / to SE)

DACOSTAKADE L2: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR LANDING - LIFT WITH SPIRAL STAIR TO OFFICE (pic 12-4-2006 / to EES) The lift doors have been removed, & a small lobby made that juts into the shaft: a plank platform backed with walls of concrete-reinforcing wire. In this enclosure a delicate steel welded spiral stair climbs half the height of the tall landing, to an office in its upper half.	DACOSTAKADE L2/3: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR HALF-LANDING - VIEW OF SPIRAL STAIR & OFFICE (pic 12-4-2006 / to NNE) We stand on the stair in the upper part of L2 looking down through the mesh of the lift-shaft & through the spiral stair's diaphanous 'cage'. In the north upper half of the high landing's space a walled mezzanine has been built, with a blue 'front-door' reached by the flimsy spiral stair. In the 1990's this was an office which administered the needs of immigrant refugees.	DACOSTAKADE L2/3: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR HALF-LANDING (pic 12-4-2006 / to SE)

DACOSTAKADE L3: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR LANDING (pic 8-93 / to E) The room-sized main portion of each landing faces the (redundant) lift & has (locked) access doors to the south end of each floor-enclave. On this level, behind the barred doors, the empty lift-shaft is floored & serves for storage.	DACOSTAKADE L4: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR LANDING (pic 12-4-2006 / to N) At the left is the south entry to floor-enclave L4; some of whose domestic/service functions have spilled onto the large landing. On this level also, the empty lift-shaft is (2006) floored & used for storage.	DACOSTAKADE L4/5: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR HALF-LANDING - BIKE & MATTRESS (pic 12-4-2006 / to SE) The strange pose of the bike amplifies the odd conjunction of stair-diagonals, horizontal ladder and ridged board; directing a disconcerting illusion of 'perspective' cues by its suggestion of purposeful leaping speed. Its position is presumably practical - the slope of the mattress would have slid it to the smooth floor but for the ledge of hidden frame that grips the wheel.

DACOSTAKADE L5: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR L5 LANDING - WITH APT ENTRY (pic 12-4-2006 / to WWN) One of two living-spaces in Hartcamp independent of an enclave (the other occupies the whole L6 penthouse) opens its steel-barred front-door directly onto the L5 landing, and strews domestic accoutrements from there to the L6 terrace exit.	DACOSTAKADE L5/L6: HARTCAMP SOUTH STAIR HALF-LANDING (pic 8-93 / to EEN) The L5 apt outgrows its bounds & furnishes its neighbour stair with signs of domesticity.	DACOSTAKADE L6: HARTCAMP CORRIDOR EXIT TO "SKY-LAWN" (pic 12-4-2006 / to WWS) Finally one reaches L6 & after a few turns & corners, through what appear to be the fringes of the L5 apt, one finds a door to Hartcamp's final destination, a gardened terrace that I called the 'Sky Lawn'.

DACOSTAKADE L6: HARTCAMP "SKY-LAWN'' (pic 8-93 / to WWS) Past Frank April's bedroom (in the directors' penthouse) is a little garden on Hartcamp's SW corner, with views to the city's horizon & into Tetterode's centre Courtyard.	DACOSTAKADE L6: HARTCAMP "SKY-LAWN'' (pic 8-93 / to SE)	DACOSTAKADE L6: HARTCAMP "SKY-LAWN'' - VIEW OVER TETTERODE COURTYARD (pic 8-93 / to WWS)

RECENT HOMES AND STUDIO-APTS IN THE DACOSTAKADE BUILDINGS
[written 4-1996]

The most recent stage in the evolution of Dacostakade’s living-spaces is that of elaborate, completely self-contained, (sometimes ‘family’) homes. Increasingly dissociated from their location - emphasising the strangeness of individual ‘houses’ stacked inside the cellular ‘megastructure’ of a factory [1]; increasingly independent of shared facilities - tending to erode the collective social structure and ethos...while often reliant for their realisation on its shared skills and workshops.

Apart from two extraordinary examples in Hartcamp [hc] [2] this development is almost exclusive to Merkelbach [mb] where spaces are usually large enough to contain ‘houses’ rather than ‘elaborated bed-sits’, and where as ‘working-artists’ the inhabitants seem more independent of each other - bound together, if at all, more by shared responsibility for work conditions than sociability. Inside the more vocationally mixed floors the sense of a social-enclave is strong [3]: exhibited in the obviously shared telephones, bathrooms, and socially used sitting/eating rooms with pictures, tv, sofa, and ‘private’ domestic objects ‘lying around’ - very different from (for instance) mb-5’s tiny ‘left-over’ tiled cooking-space, with its empty cupboard and dusty drainer! [mb-5 Kit]

Because these ‘house-like’ living-spaces (like those in EDELWEIS) were made in an ‘already-tamed’ site; in a single burst of building, 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 [4] and/or bring a previously ‘sketched’ apt to a sudden detailed finality [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.

The following five pages show Dacostakade's private domestic enclaves and their living-spaces: their shared facilities, apartments, studio-apts, and studios - firstly in the Merkelbach building [mb] and secondly the Hartcamp [hc].