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DE LOODS WESTERDOK (FROM BAY 32) W FACADE: SQUATTED SHED AND HOUSE / IMPROVISED HOMES, CARAVANS, CONSTRUCTIONS ON THE QUAY / BOAT-HOMES IN THE DOCK. IN THE DISTANCE IS THE SILO. (pic 1-92 / to N) |
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© 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 | TETTERODE | DE LOODS | EDELWEIS | APPENDICES | NOTES | SUB-SITES |
BOOK: DAVID CARR-SMITH - IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
"DE LOODS" WESTERDOK SQUAT 1979 to 2003 - p1(of 3)
DE LOODS WESTERDOK - p1: INTRO
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LOODS WESTERDOK - p2: HOMES >
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LOODS WESTERDOK - p3: HOMES - cont >
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DE LOODS WESTERDOK (FROM BAY 32) W FACADE: SQUATTED SHED AND HOUSE / IMPROVISED HOMES, CARAVANS, CONSTRUCTIONS ON THE QUAY / BOAT-HOMES IN THE DOCK. IN THE DISTANCE IS THE SILO. (pic 1-92 / to N) |
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DE
LOODS WESTERDOK INTRODUCTION
[Intro written 1995/96]
THE WHOLE SITE
THE
OCCUPATION OF THE SHED ("DE LOODS")
THE
OCCUPATION OF THE QUAY AND DOCK
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De Loods-Westerdok is unique
among these 4 sites, first as the only example of a complex of
living-environments: a building, its surrounding land and fringing water; second
as a site of intercalation: filling-in with unrelated bits of squatting over
years as commercial space was vacated. These have resulted in a vague entity,
with ad hoc amenities and no central social/political organisation, defined in
having shared a choice of location and by the ambience of the site itself. In contrast the other three sites are products of planned occupations and
co-operative development. Their clear gestalt: their topological definition and
above all their collective endeavour (legally defined as ‘Vereniging’ or
Stichting’) conferring the security support and approval of a group and making
skills and resources available to all, may account for their constructional
confidence and inventive energy - compared with the more modest but also less
experientially demanding charm of De Loods-Westerdok, where alone or helped by a
few friends, people expose roots of architecture and conceptions of “home”
which are more sober for their lack of an infusion of magnificent site or
collective power.
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De Loods (“the Shed”) - magnetic centre of this
complex site - is a 212m long and 10m wide brick shed raised on a 1.2m podium
like a temple; floored inside with flagstones under a pitched wooden roof braced
by light steel trusses; opening on each side through 46 #x#m
loading doors. Like a long semi-permeable wall separating its access road
Westerdoksdijk from its wide quay fronting the water of Westerdok: once a major
import-dock (lock-gated before the closing of the Zuider Zee), now a calm
forgotten inlet at the central-city’s edge.
Standing at the south entry to Westerdoksdijk - a
long shiny cobbled trough between rail-embankment and shed - one sees the simple
child’s house-shape of the shed’s flat end propagated in fast-shrinking
perspective past 33 identical loading-bays before the slight facade-change of
its 3-bay customs office - 10 more loading-bays and the shed grows a 3-bay house
for rail workers - 4 more and it stops...except for a diminished little 1960
bungalow-addition that sprouts a steel-container sealed to its end wall (like a
tiny tail on this interminable building): the store-room of Rod the site’s
first squatter.
De Loods and its surroundings is one of those
‘backwaters’ (typical of, alas! “the older Amsterdam”) where people find
a site without he ‘City’s’ gaze for heterogeneous small initiatives. At
the entry to the dijk (and dock) respectable boat-dwellers have extended their
squatted moorings onto the pavement as individualised gateways and elaborated hutments; temporary-looking ‘permanent’ sheds hide small industries (a
locally famous eel-smokery etc.); sold through a newspaper ad “a little house
in a nice area” sits on its squatted plot!
Further down the gloomy road under the shadowing embankment an isolated
squatted pre-fab (rail-office) tries to spread some inside warmth into its dank
site through a tiny garden of vines and painted scrap. On the water side of De
Loods lines of living-boats squat the docks whole length - enclosing a foreshore
of improvisations evolving on the wide quay before the backdrop of the great
shed, and edging the flat sandy hinterland of the dock beyond where wild flowers
grow in the grass among the rail tracks (which extend a single line to the forecourt of the Silo, enabling the trundlings of its strange tram).
On this ‘waste-land’ the site’s last improvised building stands: a
delicate little coloured house-like store for boats’ needs with a deep
fore-stage for work and sitting.
The whole site from the embanked rail-sidings to the dock is the property of the Dutch railways (N.V. Nederlandsche Spoorwegen); it was major freight-terminal before the Central Station was opened. The long warehouse-shed was built in 1922 as a goods interface between the boats of Westerdok and the lorries and trains of Westerdoksdijk. By 1979 it housed a selection of trading companies, a customs office, and its first squatter, it's now almost completely given up to improvised living (except for one tenacious trader).
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THE OCCUPATION OF THE SHED ("DE LOODS")
As a place to live in De Loods has evolved slowly and piecemeal.
In 1979 when Rob moved-in the dock was working. Walking past he noticed the
rail-workers’ house was open, empty, with its services still on - he’d lived
there a year before he was discovered - though much of the dock was busy
unloading big rolls of paper from foreign boats, the customs office was open,
and the long shed an active warehouse. In 1980 his brother became the second
squatter in the house.
The most radical transformation of De Loods began in
February ‘83 when a group of five took ‘possession’ of an empty section of
its warehousing intending to construct living-spaces inside it [Re:
ALMA’S HOUSE]. The first to undertake a physical transformation of
the building, rather than simply occupy its existing house-like locations.
It took the next seven years for De Loods to (almost)
fill with a mixture of workshops and homes. The great open enclosures of the
shed attracted not so much ‘artists’ (as did Tetterode with its huge
windows) but ‘fabricators’: wood and metal workers furniture makers: from
single person workshops with work-floors and store-places tightly packed into
the high space, to huge open enclosures which several people shared [Re: ROBERT
and BAS WORKSHOP]. By 1989 when the last living-space was occupied [ Re: EELCO’S HOUSE], 5 homes and #
craft-studios had been built inside undifferentiated portions of the shed. In
the early ‘80’s there were about 5 children on the whole site (including
boatsl), in 1995 there are about 20.
The big simple space inside the shed is similar in its lack of formal/functional prompting to Edelweis, the other ‘row-housing’ site - otherwise they are in total contrast. De Loods was squatted piecemeal and so its openness has facilitated ad hoc space-grabbing/-enclosing and individual negotiation; Edelweis was squatted in a single act by 6 organised artists who tightly planned its evolution and divided the communal cake with mechanical fairness; then subsequently (as an 8-person Collective) bought the site and completed eight enormous apts, from primary construction to the last moving-in (including all personal vicissitudes and delays) in under two years - such is the power of concerted action!
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THE OCCUPATION OF THE QUAY AND DOCK
De Loods and its surroundings especially the fronting quay
and dock, is a loose ‘village’ of ad hoc improvisations.
The differentiation of the whole site began while the
dock still functioned, with the squat-berthing of boats against the unused
portion fronting the Shed’s south 15 bays (used by a Company that alone
remains after 30 years). Two or three boats at first; multiplying as the dock
closed: all sorts from real sailable large ones to barges with bungalows built
on them - accumulating in single to triple rows until the beginning of the water
became another zone of ‘land’. Fronted by this water-fringe of boats and overlooked by the occupants of the Shed raised
along its back like the cyclorama of a stage, the 12½ metres of sand and
stone-edged quay is a safe-haven for a more vulnerable kind of squatting: in
caravans and little improvised houses.
The unbroken barricade of the Shed walls the
seclusion of this water-fringing idyll from sight or thought of its back-side: a
dank, industrially dirtied, condom-flecked cobbled road under high-embanked
trains, electric poles and wires, (a site famous for diesel-oil pollution). Ten
metres above the quay the Shed’s red-tiled roof meets blue sky - no suspicion
of urban/industrial filth penetrates the water-side ‘rural’ enclave which
charmingly spreads itself in gardens and wild flowers, a small field, swings and
wood-piles, little construction enterprises, sitting- and play-places, dumps,
caravans, and small improvised houses of a free individuality and beauty,
fabricated with found materials (site-screening ply, bits of city buildings,
‘mentally-evocative adornments’) in a spirit of necessity and expressive
play. The Shed’s internal houses and workshops, their improvised fronts
filling its loading-doors, grade down via the fronting terrace, by makeshift
ramps and steps to this hinterland of variably-defined ownership where contacts
and conversations between passers-by and the inhabitants of Shed, caravans, and
boats may freely happen.
Far from suburbia’s pavement-fringing ‘ante-rooms of privacy’ - one may walk into a small field of grass and flowers spread before an apt terrace, to ask a question of those sitting there, perhaps to be invited…in a space requiring no rituals of exclusion and inclusion, of appreciation and ownership. Thus inventing the ‘country-city’ - grading the transition from city to privacy through a region of shared and exchanged initiatives, here resembling, in its complex functionality and territorial vagueness, a rural farm-like place. Dutch people and Amsterdam itself seem open to the influence of the countryside - maybe it’s the flat land; the reclamations that involve the whole country in the land; the smallness of the city, perhaps the weather that sweeps over it the freshness of the open air and sea.
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DE LOODS WESTERDOK - WEST-/QUAY-FACADE : SHED: BAY REF-NUMBERS & APT/WORK-SHOP NAMES / QUAY= HOUSE NAMES - (all at 1994) (SITE DR 1994--) [ NB: Shed bay-numbers (south to north = 1 to 53) are for my convenience - I never knew the official numbers ] [ Due to time and access limitations info is incomplete --- too late now [2005]! - the City council has destroyed the entire site [Re: APPENDIX 3] |
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THE WESTERDOKSDIJK (EAST) SIDE OF DE LOODS - THE ROAD ACCESS
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DE
LOODS - WESTERDOKSDIJK: THE ROAD-FRONT OF DE LOODS:
FROM S END
Having turned off De Ruijter Kade and crossed a bridge over Westerdok's southern outlet, one views the approx 220m length of the shed's dedicated road (a strip of cobbles between shed and embanked rail-sidings). Beyond the shed's far end, beside a field of grass-hidden rails, this service-road briefly rejoins the main route, and then arrows out into Het IJ on a high dijk against which the huge Silos are as if moored. |
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LOODS - WESTERDOKSDIJK: THE DE LOODS ROAD-FRONT FROM BAY 33 Looking back to the road's south entry from Bay-33 just south of the Customs Office. Bay-33 has an entry to Eeelco Leemans' house and Leen's workshop |
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LOODS - WESTERDOKSDIJK: THE ROAD-FRONT OF DE LOODS: CENTRE PORTION FROM
BAY-33 Near the centre of the long Shed: #19A, the pink steel door [pic: lt] leads into the workshop 'forecourt' of Eeelco's house. The symmetrical 'applied-facade' is the old Customs Office [pic: cntr], adapted into a home. The 3-story rail-workers' house [pic: rt] was home to the shed's first squatter in 1979. |
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LOODS - WESTERDOKSDIJK - TEMPORARY RAILWAY OFFICE MADE INTO SQUAT-HOME |
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THE WESTERDOK (WEST) SIDE OF DE LOODS - THE GARDENS, QUAY & DOCK
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LOODS WESTERDOK: VIEW
ACROSS WESTERDOK
OF DE LOODS & ITS QUAY |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (S OF BAY 1) Entry to the Westerdok quay around the south end of De Loods. I am at the SW corner of the huge shed looking along its loading-platform, past facades of homes and workshops. This 'rooted' caravan is the first of those lining the cobbled path between the dock-water and the Shed's 12 south end bays. We will walk along the quay to the north. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 2) - GRACE'S ENCAMPMENT Walking north along the cobbled path. In front of the first 12 company-owned bays of the Shed are six 'encampments' based on mobile (or once mobile) homes - the first is the blue hut [previous pic], the next is Grace's purple caravan Some of these caravan squatters may well have placed their vehicles at other locations on the quay and had them dragged by early occupiers of the Shed to this unclaimed south end. Up to around 1993, territory, outlook from the shed, and claims to quay-side garden-plots by the boats, were contentious issues. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 4) - CRISTINE'S ENCAMPMENT
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 8) - AREND ENCAMPMENT Arend’s encampment is centred on junk re-cycling (a classic of its kind) - he is said to hate PVC waste and thus collects and sells it, aiming to recycle it eternally. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 10)
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 12) |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 12) |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 16) This wonderfully relaxed location, a short walk from the city's crowded centre, provided its citizens and visitors with a quasi-rural 'breathing space', a retreat from tensions, noise and pollution. Together, the council and 'big business' destroyed it! |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 16) First [bay 16] is the house of a woman (unnamed), then Grace de la Luna's 2 bay home, its first bay [17] jutting a veranda from the shed's facade, its second [18] is the home's entry; beyond [bays 19/20/21] is Alma's 3-bay home. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 20) The 2 left bays [23/22] are Jaques' home. The 2 right bays [21/20] are part of Alma's 3-bay home. The blue door is Alma's 'front-door' opening directly into the 'open-site' portion of her space. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 22) |
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DE LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 25): SHED
LOADING PLATFORM Looking back towards the south end along the shed's dock loading platform - past the blue doors of Marijke's studio, then Jacque's home, Alma's home, Grace's home with its jutting terrace, and etc..
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 34): Past the blue facade of the erstwhile Custom House, occupied by the family of Annaloos and René. |
DE LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 37):
PLAYGROUND |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 38) Looking back towards the south end.
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 41) Looking to a caravan associated with a boat-building shed, then the yellow windows of Jolien's home, and finally at bay 47 near the shed's north end, it expands into the Customs workers' house. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 44): JOLIEN
SELF-MADE HOUSE FROM PATH From the front-gate of Jolien's, the most elaborate of the little independent houses built on the quay. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 45): DOLL-HEDGE Associated with this doll-infested hedge is a caravan home. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 45): DOLL-HEDGE CARAVAN HOME The caravan home beside the doll-hedge - beyond it [bays 47-50] is the Custom House employees' portion of De Loods. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 53) |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 52) Living-boats and Hassan's little 'box-house' bracket the path. In the distance and across a road at the path's far end, is the Grain-Silo squat. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 53) |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY (AT BAY 54) The backdrop of the great Shed has diminished to a small 1960 bungalow addition; on the quay before it is Afra's caravan, grown into a self-built home. |
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LOODS WESTERDOK QUAY - N OF DE LOODS: OPEN GROUND UNTIL THE SILO Beyond the north end of the Shed - edged by the living-boats of Westerdok - is a broad expanse of grass-grown rail sidings, across which one walks north to the huge Grain-Silo. |
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DE LOODS WESTERDOK - p1: INTRO
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DE
LOODS WESTERDOK - p2: HOMES >
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DE
LOODS WESTERDOK - p3: HOMES - cont >
CONTENTS
4
SITES
TETTERODE
DE
LOODS
EDELWEIS
APPENDICES
NOTES
SUB-SITES
