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CONTENTS   4 SITES  

SILO

   TETTERODE   DE LOODS   EDELWEIS   APPENDICES   NOTES   SUB-SITES

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

"GRAIN-SILO" SQUAT 1989 to 1998

NORTH and SOUTH DRYING-TOWERS  - p5(of 5) :

the SOUTH-TOWER

 

< SILO - INTRO <  
< DRYING-TOWERS - p1: N and S TOWERS INTRO / N TOWER and APTS < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p2: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p3: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p4: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
   DRYING-TOWERS - p5: S TOWER and APTS 
> SILO - "CORNER TOWER" >

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THE SOUTH DRYING-TOWER
[NB: all dimensions were measured on-site and are approximate] [text is 9-2006]

The South Tower is a squat brick box, added before 1910 to the Silo’s south end, probably as the Silo workers' pay office. Later (c1940s) it was adapted to house the Silo's second grain dryer. To accomodate this 10.5m stack of steel boxes, their 1.2m outlet spout and surmounting 3.5m cyclone cone, plus a space below to receive its output and a space above from which to fill it, necessitated doubling the height of the east-half of the brick tower with a crude wooden extension. 

The Tower's entrance is at basement level, down in the slot between the Silos. From the public dijk one must clamber up a huge steel 'step' onto a surface that extends back 9m (a loading-platform?), and descend its rear stair (it also admits to the New-Silo tower's entry-catwalk). The front 4m of this huge sheet has been cut, hinged at its rear, and strung with counterweigh and raising-gear, to gape like a mouth and admit ravers to the New-Silo's basement. Behind this prodigy is Marcel's ingeniously locked steel gate that closes access when the front 'step' is lowered.

S-TOWER FROM THE DIJK
(pic 9-94 / to EEN)

Marcel - the first occupier and domesticator of the S-Tower - thinks this brick addition began as a workers' pay-office and that its conversion to dryer was a 1940's innovation.

From this public dijk one walks to the rear of the 9m rusty steel platform, through Marcel's steel entry gate [open in the pic] and down steps at its far end into a sunken slot between the Silos from where the tower is entered.

S-TOWER FROM THE QUAY
(pic 11-97 / to W)

This view between the old and new Silos from the Quay's raised south end reveals the whole 18.5m S-Tower built onto the end-wall of the old Silo. The 10m high brick portion was crudely heightened in the 1940's(?) with a wood-framed shingle-clad extension to accommodate a 12m vertical dryer installation. 

At the rear of the raised quay a stair descends to the low space between the Silos, from where the S-Tower is entered. On the left is the handrail of the S-Tower's entry level causeway, on the right is Paul's "Corner-Tower".

S- TOWER: INTERIOR STRUCTURES AS FOUND
(Marcel drawing + my notes 8-1995 / Section WWS to EEN - view to NNW)

The installations were less substantial than the massive and tightly packed dryer-stack on the tower's west side above the L0 boiler-room, and above the  stack itself in the tower's peak. It was thus the L1 and L2 rooms, the L3 terrace, and the topmost L4 space, that Marcel cleared for living in.

S- TOWER: INTERIOR STRUCTURES
(on-site drawing  c1995 [additions 2006] / Section WWS to EEN - view to NNW)

NB: The tower is viewed as if seeing through the dryer-stack to the stair, etc behind it.

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THE SOUTH DRYING-TOWER AND ITS APTS
 [Text 1995]

Two people now live in the South Tower. Its domestication was far less demanding than the North Tower’s: not purpose-built it was less uniformly packed, its dryer-stack with associated stair densely filled only half its width and was not removed; lesser mechanisms, more easily dismantled (cyclone-cones with impellers and exhaust chimneys, and a weighing machine) were spaciously housed in the other half and in the cavity at the tower’s top - these Marcel cleared for his two-floor apt and made the top space habitable for his brother.

No longer accessible from the old Silo’s interior the tower is entered from the slot between the Silos. In a little junk-edged yard down metal steps between the towering walls one unlocks a steel door into one of those locations so distinct and self-enclosed it erases the ‘outside’ and one knows 'this is an adventure!'. A small unique world in which, somewhere, there are people, who - strange as it seems - chose it for living in.

The visit starts in a 4½m metal cell (the remainder of the 10 x 4½m space is a walled-off boiler room) scattered with dirt, boxes, clothes., keyboards, monitors, beercans, bourgeois dining-chairs and the bulky ‘freezer-box’ of an ‘80’s mainframe (a “9000”!) - lit in the dirty fluorescence that seems a sine qua non of ante-rooms to the Silo’s magical places - canopied overhead by the outlet spout of a 12m stack of steel chambers, through which, via their stuffing of slatted tubes, impellers once sucked heated air, drying a downward crawling mass of grain and exhausting the dust-filled wind into cyclone-separator cones.

Five open flights of perforated-stair zigzag up the dryer’s sheer steel side, the first two landings open at the rear into Marcel’s rooms, the third to the brick building’s terrace roof (from which one may clamber on planks over an awesome drop and enter a window in the New Silo’s tower), the fourth (15m) level surmounts the stack, a steel platform surrounded with gaps that Marcel filled with floor: now Guido’s bizarre apt that caps the tower.  

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CLIMBING THE TOWER ...

S-TOWER ENTRANCE LEVEL BETWEEN THE SILOS
(pic 6-94 / to EEN)

Steps down from the raised Quay lead to a narrow slot of space betweeen the old and new Silos. At my left [off pic] is the base and entry-level of the S-Tower.

S-TOWER L0: ENTRY CHAMBER
(pic 6-94 / to W)

One enters the east half of the S-Tower - the half occupied by the dryer-stack - into a junk-scattered space beneath the stack's discharge-hopper (the hopper's exit-spout is visible pic: top). At this base level (L0) the Tower's west half is a gas-diesel boiler room; at L1 and L2 it is now used for living in.

Marcel cut a floor-level window in the east wall of his apt's L1 room looking into this space [pic: upper lft-cntr].

S-TOWER L0: ENTRY CHAMBER
(pic 6-94 / to NW)

To the right of the dryer-stack's support frame the stair begins.

 

S-TOWER L0: ENTRY CHAMBER - VIEW UP STAIR TO L1 (MARCEL'S LOWER APT-ROOM)
(pic 6-94 / to N)

The stair's first flight rises from just inside the S-Tower's entry door, curves round the first corner and up the E-wall to L1, from where it mounts the rest of the Tower within the 1.8m wide space between the dryer-stack and the Tower's N-side: the Silo's end-wall.

S-TOWER L1: FROM L1 LANDING - VIEW DOWN STAIR TO L0 
(pic 6-94 / to S)

From the stair's first landing I look back down to L0 - the Tower's entry door is open. 

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MARCEL VAN DER BILDT APT (ROOM-1: WINTER 1989--) (L1)
[Text 9-2006: based on notes from a 8-1995 on-site interview with Marcel]

Marcel's arrival in the newly squatted Silo was delayed, and the new Collective had already distributed living-spaces in the main building. In spite of his important contributions to the development of its facilities (and his consequent acceptance by the Collective); and the eviction in Nov 89 from his home-squat Bolgakov, he lived outside the Silo until he had converted a room in the South Drying Tower.

In Sept 1989 he began to clear the Tower's west-side ex-offices. From Sept to Dec he removed the installations in the level-2 room (two cyclone cones, their motors pipes and chimneys - mostly removable by unbolting and grinding) and filled their associated floor holes. However the room's big office windows had been bricked up and the work of domestic conversion seemed excessive. Thus, for the rest of the 1989/90 winter, he worked on the level-1 room. He closed its installation ceiling holes; fitted an entry door, a sink, etc., and excavated bricks at the sides of an existing small square dijk-facade window-opening, extending it to a long shallow-arched slot. In the spring/summer 1990 he began to live there.

Having made a home for himself, with the help of a guest he undertook the conversion of level-3 into an apt for his brother [Re: GUIDO APT below].

After that Marcel 'took a year off': "lazing about" / "to get civilised again ... after year of work" ... then: "after one civilised year ... started to do second year of civilised nothing".

MARCEL APT L1 - KITCHEN & WORK-ROOM
(pic 6-94 / to WWS)

Marcel's lower room is a venue for work, eating, and visitors. 

MARCEL APT L1 - KITCHEN & WORK-ROOM:
NW-CORNER
(pic 6-94 / to N)

MARCEL APT L1 - KITCHEN & WORK-ROOM:  WINDOW VIEW
(pic 6-94 / to W)

Standing near Marcel's widened low window allows a view of the Silo's dijk-entry gate.

MARCEL APT L1 - KITCHEN & WORK-ROOM:  WINDOW VIEW
(pic-extract 6-94 / to WWS)

When sitting at Marcel's table his window frames the bulk of the Van Diemenkade warehouse: "Yteck", converted for business studio/workshop use.

MARCEL APT L1 - KITCHEN & WORK-ROOM: N-WALL WORK-DESK
(pic 6-94 / to N)

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CLIMBING THE TOWER ... cont ...

S-TOWER L1: FROM L1 LANDING - VIEW UP STAIR TO L2
(pic 9-94 / to NW)

 

S-TOWER L1/2: FROM MID WAY UP L1/2 STAIR - VIEW UP TO L4
(pic 9-94 / to NNW)

Looking up into the web of mesh-steel stairs between the cubic tower of stacked dryers and the Silo’s once-exterior wall - whose frivolous colouring and decor of ‘souvenirs’ face-out the grim steel installation across the gap. We are approaching the upper room of Marcel’s apt [L2] [bottom of pic] - before its entrance is the scrap suburban door of its shower and wc, squeezed in a narrow cavity roughly torched from the dryer’s bulk. Above our heads is the landing of L3 which exits to the terrace (the half-roof of the brick tower); from there on up is the narrower wooden tower capped by Guido’s strange apt, just visible through the stair’s rectangular entry-slot.

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MARCEL VAN DER BILDT APT (ROOM-2: SEP 1989 / SEP 1993 / WINTER 1994--) (L2)
 [Text 9-2006: based on notes from a 8-1995 on-site interview with Marcel] 

In spring 1993 Marcel returned to work on his upper room - abandoned since he cleared its installations in december 1989. Now he unblocked the two bricked-up windows and fitted new? ones, made a wall with entry door, and in september 1993, again 'gave up and left it': it was "too much" to use it!  His interest shifted to the New Silo [Re: NEW-SILO - PUBLIC & PRIVATE].

In winter 1994 Marcel again resumed work on the upper room: repaired the walls, made a bed platform, laid wood-sheets on the concrete floor (his room below was floored in wood already), and finally made an extraordinary excision from the central unit of the dryer stack that filled the space outside his room, releasing a strip of space for shower and wc. The work was all finished in spring 1995.

MARCEL APT L2 - LIVING-ROOM (IN PROGRESS)
(pic 6-94 / to SSW)

MARCEL APT L2 - LIVING-ROOM (IN PROGRESS)
(pic 6-94 / to E)

MARCEL APT L2 - LIVING-ROOM ENTRY AND LANDING SHOWER / WC
(pic 8-95 / to SSW)

The finished room can be glimpsed through the bead-curtain (it was never possible to photograph it directly).

MARCEL APT L2 - SHOWER / WC
(pic 8-95 / to S)

Marcel has cut a passage through the dryer box - retained its rear wall, and bridged with a steel step a 0.5m gap between its lip and landing. Inside, neon lit, is a heated shower and then a wc.

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CLIMBING THE TOWER ... cont ...

S-TOWER L2: LANDING & STAIRS DOWN TO L1 & UP TO L3
(pic 9-94 / to NNW)

S-TOWER L2: FROM STAIR TO L2/3 HALF-LANDING - WALL DECORATION
(pic 6-94 / to NNW)

An ad hoc accumulation of 'trophies' and colours in bizzare disconuity with the industrial setting

S-TOWER L2/3: HALF-LANDING WINDOW - 'CREATURES'
(pic 9-94 / to E)

The half-landing window cill at the turn of the stair displays a couple of 'found-creatures' whose phantismagoric aliveness affords the existing window-catch a tranformation to a motivated worm!

S-TOWER L3 TERRACE
(pic 9-94 / to EEN)

The half-depth extension tower leaves room for a terrace on the brick-tower's roof. 

In july '92 Marcel removed chimneys that emerged from two cyclone dust-cleaners in his room beneath, and from the boiler in the tower's base.

The windowed lower cavity is now a greenhouse.

The step-ladder is possibly for reaching the top of the wooden air-intake passage that once emerged from the upper dryer through the 'greenhouse' opening, and runs between the Silos to the rear - it provides a rather hazardous 'bridge' to an L3 window in the New-Silo's tower. 

The hole through the structure's upper shingle wall was cut by Guido to light his dryer-top apt.

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GUIDO VAN DER BILDT APT (SUMMER 1990--) (L4)

This extraordinary apt perches on the top of the dryer-stack’s delivery-hopper, whose flat metal top was once this level's only 'floor' - Marcel filled the rest with wood. The last of the tower’s three cyclone-cones is now its stove. From this living-room the stair is a deep pit of spidery steel ... ascending the thin ladder beside it - first to a scaffold-supported bed-platform (from which hangs a ‘sculpture-collage’), next up to the lip of a ledge: a steel door somehow wedged that floors an ultimate little cavity in the tower’s top (its grain inlet from the New Silo): as large as a generous coffin, spread with leather cast-offs, lit by a port-hole: Guido’s “guest-loft”!...adds 4½ more metres of vertigo to the 15 metre pit.

GUIDO APT L4 - APT FROM NE CORNER
(pic 6-94 / to SW) 

Marcel and his friend Dare Bozic[sp?] made this space habitable for Marcel's brother in summer '90. They floored the open gulf around the dryer's flat top; made a stove of the cyclone, and welded the supports of the sleeping platform. 

GUIDO APT L4 - APT ENTRY STAIR FROM NE CORNER 
(pic 6-94 / to SW)

GUIDO APT L4 - STOVE IN CYCLONE DUST CLEANER CONE
(pic 9-94 / to SW)

GUIDO APT L4 - NW-CORNER: NEW WINDOW 
(pic 9-94 / to NW)

Guido has cut a new window in the apt's front facade - through the relatively flimsey wooden wall of the secondary tower. This small addition seems to have released a new sitting/table place.

 

GUIDO APT L4
(paste-up: x2 pics 6-94 / to WWS)

Up the thin green ladder, past Guido's bed platform, is a green steel door wedged flat in the base of the Tower's highest cavity: its erstwhile grain inlet - this is the visitor's sleeping platform! - from here 4.4m of ladder is added to an already vertiginous 15m view down the Tower's pierced stair.

GUIDO APT L'5' - 'VISITOR' SLEEPING PLATFORM
(pic 6-94 / to E)

A steel-door 'bunk' strewn with a landscape of foam-slabs and worn leather coats; and lit with a moon-like hole - Guido's "Guest Loft" has a 19+m visual-drop from its edge to the base of the tower.

 

GUIDO APT L4 - PLATFORM-LADDER VIEW
(pic 6-94 / to SE)

(Note the stair-well is covered with a fabric sheet: a draught-/vision-excluder(?))

GUIDO APT L4 - APT E WINDOW: VIEW OF THE 'CORNER TOWER'
(pic 6-94 / to NE)

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^ Top    > Next Page >

< SILO - INTRO <   
< DRYING-TOWERS - p1: N and S TOWERS INTRO / N TOWER and APTS < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p2: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p3: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
< DRYING-TOWERS - p4: N TOWER and APTS - cont < 
^  DRYING-TOWERS - p5: S TOWER and APTS 
> SILO - "CORNER TOWER" >

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CONTENTS   4 SITES  

SILO

   TETTERODE   DE LOODS   EDELWEIS   APPENDICES   NOTES   SUB-SITES