IMPROVISED HOMES IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS

The most austerely industrial, the least humane, the most bizarre and extreme challenge to domestication that this huge Silo building-machine (or any other site I’ve seen) presented, is the version at the N end: the 'North-Tower' or "Iron-Tower" - a totally utilitarian 30m high, 9x7m, 8-level, steel-frame structure, cheaply built in the early 1950’s. Its thin frame in-filled with single brick on three sides, the fourth is the Silo’s external wall. It contained a double stack of dryers fed by a huge delivery-hopper near its top; beneath the stack were sievers and weighers, and everywhere ducting.

Two aspects of the domesticated North-Tower are marvelous. The first is the exceptional/acute poignancy of the contrast, in this least comfortable and most austere of all the Silo’s mini-regions, between domesticity and its harsh industrial context. The second is the extraordinary resourcefulness and energy of the people who made the tower habitable - for an unmotivated outsider this so-called “Iron-Tower” would have presented an inconceivable challenge: much of what is now inhabited was filled with installations - without cutting and moving large amounts of metal there was no space to use.


THE NORTH TOWER FROM THE DIJK (pic 11-97 / to SE) The North Tower, built in the 1950s against the Silo's original north facade, is here viewed from the dijk - just past the workers' house, the most northerly of all the Silo's buildings.	NORTH TOWER FROM THE KROEG ROOF (pic 6-94 / to S) N-Tower (L 2 to 8) from the Kroek (cafe) roof. At this level (L2: 9m) the tower emerges from its half-surrounding buildings (the “Kroeg” and the “Ketelhoek”), freeing windows and escape-doors. The tower's visible levels are as follows : L2: HORST apt (floor 2) L3: un-cleared machines L4: BRIAN apt (floor 1) L5: BRIAN apt (floor 2) L6: KITCHEN L7: KLAAS apt (floor 1) L8: KLAAS apt (floor 2)	NORTH TOWER - INTERIOR WITH APTS (on-site drawing c95 / to NE) N-Tower (L 0 to L8) - stair, apt-enclosures, main-features.
. THE NORTH TOWER AND ITS APTS CLIMBING THE TOWER ... To enter the N-Tower near its top one must be invited to pass through Henriette's Attic apt and use a door in the Silo's end wall. The common way is to climb into it from below, a strange journey which begins where the long gallery of the Ground-Floor (the “Gang”) ends. A small steel-girt opening in the N end-wall of the Gang exits into a large square and almost empty space: the discharging floor of the North Tower. Not so much a room as a junction of ways - vaguely furnished with washing-machines and cluttered with junk; its harshness softened by the subtly minimal decor of a past public party: the drooping triangle of a white sail whose axis directed visitors from quay to cafe, and orange paper tubular tongues hanging from the dark square mouth of a truncated steel hopper descending from the hidden ceiling like an inverted room. Only from one place can evidence of the domesticity above be seen - up the narrow shaft of a rope hoist is the distant suspicion of a room: a glimpse of furniture weirdly poised so high and near an edge. In a dim corner, over a curtained wood-store one starts to climb the tower: the shin-bruising steel stair squeezes past the hopper’s steel flank in which a torched hole (memories of movie space-battles!) opens ones gaze into its dark cavity where a white moon-ball hangs invisibly-suspended.

ROUTE TO THE N-TOWER: ITS ENTRY DOOR THROUGH THE N-END WALL OF THE GANG (BAY-12) (pic 11-97 / to NE) At its northern end one exits the Gang bay-12 via a small steel door into the lowest level of the N-Tower, its discharging floor (L0).	N-TOWER (L0): SE CORNER: UNDER TOWER STAIR (pic 8-94 / to SE) The SE corner of the Tower's discharging floor, under the first short flight of the Tower's stair is a curtained scrap-wood pile - presumably saved for the Tower apartments' stoves..	N-TOWER (L0): SE CORNER: STAIR INTO THE TOWER (pic 8-94 / to SE) The painfully steep stair (really! - shins and heels are threatened by the narrow steel treads) rises into the underside of the tower from the SE corner of its discharging floor. Fragments of decor remain from some past party.

N-TOWER (L0): VIEW UP THE TOWER TO L6 KITCHEN (pic 6-94 / to NE) View up the Tower's hoist-shaft to its final destination in the L6 Kitchen. Remains from a party hang from within the tower's discharge hopper. The steep stair climbs past it to L1 landing.	N-TOWER (L0): SE CORNER (NIGHT): VIEW UP INTO DISCHARGE HOPPER WITH 'SPACE-BALL' (pic 11-97 / to E) Ascending the stair to L1 one passes at eye-height a triangular hole torn in the steel wall of the hopper through which, apparently floating deep in dark space, is a glowing ping-pong 'moon'.
. CLIMBING THE TOWER ... cont ... At level 1 (L1) is the tower’s first addition: a seldom used store - lit in dim red the steel landing is confined by a wall of ply and studding. The ascent continues over fraying scraps of carpet wired to each steel tread (dulling clatter) to the second level which at night can be a narrow sharp-edged space through which one moves by touch...by day its source of light draws one from below - inglowing through the first of six escape-doors leading out to tiny rusting balconies facing the space above the water of Het Ij. On this second landing one encounters the lowest of the tower’s three apts - entered via a hinged flap with “antique” knocker, surmounted by a heraldic grinning ferret. Stepping across the high threshold of this ‘inadequate illustration of a front-door’ (so square, flat and high on its smooth ply wall one has the impression of lowering oneself through a horizontal hatch) one faces the shock of a well-appointed home - not so much a contextual dislocation as amazement at such a sudden amplification of functional complexity [1], from the harshness of the factory stair’s stark unconcern with any human needs beyond mechanical locomotion and access one is instantly transported into the complex interrelated patterns of an individual’s domestic life [HORST TIMMERS APT]. Foot-Note : My shock at entering the apt from the functionally austere stair was less to do with an irreconcilable confrontation (the bizarre dichotomy of industry and domesticity) as an ‘explosive’ amplification of content. A ‘narrow point’ of need: the stair’s single function of locomotion, suddenly complexifies across the human range (emphasising the fundamentally pragmatic nature of the spectrum of human living-needs from ‘physical’ to ‘spiritual’).

N-TOWER (L1) LANDING - HOIST-HOLE & STAIR DOWN (pic 6-94 / to EEN) L1 landing. This first level glitters in the red gloom of an ‘emergency’ bulb. A shortened step from the stair top is the hoist-shaft hole - on each landing a deepening thrill of danger and a startling means of viewing through the tower. Confining the stair is the stud and ply wall of Horst’s lower room (?store).	N-TOWER (L1) LANDING - STAIR DOWN & UP (pic 6-94 / to EEN)	N-TOWER (L1) LANDING - STAIR UP & HORST ?STORE WALL. (pic 8-94 / to WWS) L1 landing with Horst's lower room (?store) wall and stair up to L2.

N-TOWER (L2) LANDING - HORST's 'FRONT-DOOR' (pic 6-94 / to NE) L2 landing with Horst's living-space 'front-door' - a 'hatch' of ply in a ply-wall.	N-TOWER (L2) LANDING - VIEW DOWN HOIST SHAFT TO L0 (pic 6-94 / to EEN)
. HORST TIMMERS APT: (DURO TOOMATO: April ‘91- / AKARDY: mid ‘92- / HORST: May ‘93- ) - (L1/2) When Horst took the space over in ‘93 the two floors (L1/2) had been cleared of machines [1] by Duro and partially covered by Akardy with joists and boards. Their development had been delayed by a judicial noise-ban and Akardy’s death (after which they were unused for several months). Horst elaborated the upper space as his apt, but never developed the lower floor beyond a store and ‘spare-room’. He walled out the stair with ply and studding (the apt-level had mattresses between the ply) and with the help of external finance insulated the whole apt space: first adding carpets and then plywood topping onto Akardy’s floors, lined the walls with ply-faced Rockwool and the ceiling (between the I-beams) with fibre/cement boards (“Woodwall Slabs”), and double-glazed the windows with Plexiglas - even thus isolated the apt quickly loses heat through the tower’s leaky walls. Foot-Note: The upper floor (L2) had housed a pair of box-like iron-framed wooden cleaning/separating machines containing mesh sieving trays - fed through pipes from the dryer higher in the tower. The floor below (L1) was a weighing-room.

N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE (pic 6-94 / to SSW) To the left is the black curtained 'front-door'.	N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE (pic 6-94 / to E) A beauty of this apt is that in a single simple space, all the functions of a home can be viewed in a single sweeping glance - from the north corner: bed, desk, kitchen, shower, wc, table, music-store, and bench, line its walls...with seating in the centre.	N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT LIVING-SPACE (pic 6-94 / to NE)

N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT: SHOWER CABIN (pic 6-94 / to SE) In his single-volume living-space the shower is an improvised 'furniture-item'.	N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT: WC (pic 11-97 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT: SW CORNER (pic 6-94 / to WWS) The ‘Gothic’ dining-chairs and table are from an up-market market, the upholstered chairs from the parental home.

N-TOWER (L2): HORST APT: NE BED CORNER (pic 6-94 / to NNE) Horst broke out corner windows through the thin single-brick panels, covered walls with ply over Rockwool insulation and double-glazed with Plexiglas. The asbestos-covered pipes beside the bed he encased in chicken-wire and plaster.	N-TOWER (L2-): HORST APT EXTERIOR: NE CORNER FROM KROEG ROOF (pic 6-94 / to S) Exterior of tower from the Kroeg roof. Horst’s (L2) ‘bed-corner’ windows compromise industrial austerity with a glimpse of incongruous cosiness.

. CLIMBING THE TOWER ... cont ... Above the first apt is the only un-transformed level in the tower (L3) - there through the eyes of a prospective occupier one apprehends the sheer work of clearing space - the floor is almost filled with metal: the lower third of the tower’s dryer, its big twinned hoppers and impeller-ducting is now crudely burned off just below a wooden in-fill ceiling (Brian’s lower floor). Suddenly the tower is undisguised and provokes a vision of the ad hoc infill character of the apts and their spatial positions in the structure (as might pertain in a ‘plug-in city’). The awareness that this steel-girt machine and dirt-filled space sits on top of Horst’s exquisite complex apt is poignant. This abandoned floor is the ‘frontier’ of Brian’s and Mark’s pioneering upper tower. From here on up the ascent is increasingly vertiginous - multi-directional views open out and through the structure: vertically and diagonally through stair and hoist-hole, and horizontally through escape-doors into the bright space above the Ij. A half-step from each stair-top 1¼ metres of missing floor opens at ones feet, deepening as one ascends, until the long perspective is so like a corridor, variegated with the walls of living-spaces: plaster, wallpaper and soft hangings, that orientation is confused - until a gasping moment when (ones body jerks back its balance as) its accelerating depth is grasped as down! - its central rope spilling at the bottom like spaghetti in the drain of a sloppy kitchen.

N-TOWER (L3): THE UNUSED FLOOR (pic 9-94 / to EES) This machine-filled floor - the only level of the tower unused (except as a dump) - separates its two zones of occupation. The only sign of the intense domesticity above this ceiling is the brutal torching of the installations that once penetrated it.	N-TOWER (L3) LANDING - THE UNCLEARED FLOOR FROM BEHIND THE HOIST-HOLE (pic 6-94 / to EES) On this level one can appreciate the multi-directional openness of the pre-squatted tower - the multi-level openings in floors and walls; the hoist and stair-holes revealing windows and escape-doors on adjacent floors.	N-TOWER (L3) LANDING - VIEW UP THE HOIST-HOLE (pic 6-94 / pic-top is E) View up to L6 Kitchen - the termination level of the hoist.

N-TOWER (L4-L3) STAIR VIEW DOWN TO L3 (pic 9-94 / to NE) View down from the stair to L3 'machine-floor' and its open escape-door.	N-TOWER (L4) LANDING VIEW TOWARDS THE IJ (pic 9-94 / to E) Both L3 and L4 escape-doors are open.	N-TOWER (L4) LANDING ESCAPE DOOR OPEN (pic 9-94 / to EEN) This level's escape-door opens onto a catwalk that is more or less intact and which fronts the lower-floor of Brian's apt.

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN'S APT FROM ESCAPE CATWALK (pic 6-94 / to NNW) Brian's lower floor, with its huge fitted windows, from escape-catwalk.	N-TOWER (L4): BRIAN APT FROM ESCAPE CATWALK (pic 6-94 / to W) Interior of Brian's lower floor from escape-catwalk.


	SILO - EXTERIOR FROM HOUTHAVENS - DRYING-TOWERS AT N & S ENDS (pic 6-94 / to EEN) The N Drying Tower projects above the Silo's N end [pic: lft]; the S Drying Tower is the smaller addition against the S end (dwarfed by the N wall of the New Silo).

NORTH DRYING-TOWER FROM THE KROEG ROOF - LEVELS 2 TO 8 (pic 8-95 / to S) The N-Tower is a utilitarian 1950's addition to the Silo's north facade. It is entered from the discharge-floor beneath it, or at its level 6, from within the N-Attic's most northern apt.	SOUTH DRYING-TOWER FROM DIJK: LOWER HALF ( L0/1/2 & L3 TERRACE) (pic 6-94 / to E) The lower half is a pre-1910 Silo extension, possibly a pay-office. The tower is entered from a sunken slot between the Silos. In the pic the 'step' of its steel entry platform is raised (to allow access to the New-Silo basement); its counterweight cable is visible and behind it can be seen the bars of Marcel's locked entry gate.	SOUTH DRYING-TOWER: UPPER HALF [L3/L4] FROM ITS L3 TERRACE (pic 6-94 / to E) The upper half is a crude 1940s(?) wood-frame, mineral-shingle clad extension that enabled the whole 18m high agglomeration to accommodate a dryer-stack. Note the step-ladder up to a dangerous bridge across the gap to the New-Silo tower's L3 window entry!