THE 'REDEVELOPED' SQUATS
[written 2006-07]

.

THE 4-SITES

At this time (mid 2006) only two of these four 'monuments to improvisatory initiatives' exist. The Silo and De Loods Westerdok have been destroyed, Edelweis and Tetterode survive but devolve. 

The SILO's  outer shell (protected by a low level 'industrial monument' rating) has been cleaned and 'de-mystified', empted and re-filled with (cheap) concrete (expensive) commercial apartment-cells. DE LOODS and its idyllic quayside plus Westerdok's huge polluted rail mound and fringing grassland, are erased flattened and handed to developers for office and apt building. EDELWEIS is at last dissolving into the generalised social world of private-home-ownership and property-speculation. Owned by its artist occupiers since 1991, the financial value of its magnificent living-spaces has risen past the temptation point and most have already been sold. Only TETTERODE, too vast to rapidly or perhaps ever wholly change, retains a modicum of its innovative energy - some apts are stagnant but others differentiate and grow (often spurred by growth of families), and some have become the 'show-homes' of 'designers'.

Shown below is the present state of the Silo and the De Loods Westerdok site:

.

THE SILOS ARE 'REFORMED' AS THE "SILODAM" APARTMENTS - 2002  

In 199# the City evicted the Silo occupiers. By 2002 the Silos had been converted into one of Amsterdam's most expensive sets of housing blocks. The Old and New Silos were gutted - their uniquely strange interiors destroyed and the husks partitioned into a multitude of rectangular concrete spaces; windowed, doored, staired and shafted with lifts - as utilitarian and mean, boorish and cynically crude, as a suburban speculator's 1960s office-block. The location alone ensured value.

The Silos' dijk became a steel-fronted asphalt-topped box, diagrammed for car parking, with a facade-fringing plank pavement for the softer needs of human soles. At its north end a brand new housing block was made, straddling the water, and (it is said) referencing via its chequered facades the chance-order and vicarious visual entertainment of stacked shipping containers (an irony: both aesthetic and social?). This chunk of wit slightly breaks the tedium of visual and physical simplicity and cleanness.

"SILODAM": DIJK SHOP-FRONT - SELLING APARTMENTS  (pic 6-8-05) / to EEN)	"SILODAM":  FROM THE DIJK ENTRY (pic 6-8-05 / to NNE)	"SILODAM": S-END FROM DOCKSIDE - NEW-SILO CONVERSION  (pic 6-8-05 / to N) Who will sit here and why - to gaze at that!  What determined the seat positions - Idealism?
"SILODAM": W-FACADE FROM THE HOUTHAVEN - OLD-SILO CONVERSION  (pic 6-8-05 / to EEN)	"SILODAM": W-FACADE FROM THE HOUTHAVEN - NEW-SILO CONVERSION  (pic 6-8-05 / to EEN)	"SILODAM": BETWEEN NEW & OLD SILOS (pic 6-8-05 / to E)  Note the South Drying-Tower has been removed, but the Corner Tower on the quay-front survives.
"SILODAM": DIJK FACADE - PART (pic 6-8-05 / to NNE)	"SILODAM": DIJK - NW-CORNER OF OLD-SILO (pic 25-10-06 / to NNE )	"SILODAM": QUAY - NE-CORNER: THE OLD- SILO'S KROEG (paste-up: x2 pics 25-10-06 / to NNE )
"SILODAM": FROM THE STENENHOOFD (pic 6-8-05 / to NW) The converted Silos and a new block at the dijk's north end.	"SILODAM": E-FACADE FROM THE  STENENHOOFD - THE OLD SILO'S CENTRE (pic 6-8-05 / to WWN)	"SILODAM": THE GLAZED QUAY (pic 6-8-05 / to SE)
"SILODAM": QUAY - CENTRE ENTRY-HALL (pic 6-8-05 / to EEN	"SILODAM": QUAY - CENTRE ENTRY-HALL (pic 6-8-05 / to WWN)	"SILODAM": QUAY - SUBSIDIARY ENTRY-HALL (pic 6-8-05 / to W) A less public, subsiduary entry from the rear quay: here this architect's 'clean and definate', seemingly 'pragmatic and minimal' style is exposed, by this shoddy melange, as a 'cheap and easy' kitsch signage merely referencing 'design-definition and finish'!
"SILODAM": DIJK - CENTRE ENTRY-HALL (paste-up: x2pics 6-8-05 / to NNE) From the 1st landing, looking through an office space towards the west front.	"SILODAM": STAIR THROUGH APT LEVELS - LANDING WITH LIFT (pic 6-8-05 / to ?)	"SILODAM": STAIR THROUGH APT LEVELS (pic 6-8-05 / to ?)
"SILODAM": STAIR THROUGH APT LEVELS (pic 6-8-05 / to ?)	"SILODAM": STAIR THROUGH APT LEVELS - LANDING WITH APT ENTRY-DOOR (pic 6-8-05 / to ?)	"SILODAM": E-SIDE APARTMENT (pic 6-8-05 / to WWN)

.

DE LOODS IS DESTROYED AND WESTERDOK 'REDEVELOPED' AS HOUSING AND OFFICES - 200# 

Except for the living-boats, whose facilities and moorings have been slightly extended, and which sustain (especially at the south end) a little sanctuary of individualism and improvisation, the De Loods-Westerdok site has been completely cleared and is now being covered with vast and commonplace apartment and office buildings. 

The once exquisite, detailed and richly entertaining dock - a small noise and traffic-sheltered portion of rural relaxation and natural growth in the midst of city - a walk graced with continual changes and rich with the entertainment of all types of individual initiatives - is now a uniform flat perspective of 'cobbel-effect' paving edged with large lamp posts.