IMPROVISED HOMES IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS

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

The tower’s five upper levels (L4-8): two 2-floor apts with a kitchen between them, have the presence of ’domain’. The tower’s stair, as it passes Brian’s apt, serves also as his 'private' stair between his floors; it then becomes irregular and to continue upwards one must cross occupied spaces - a sense of privacy pervades, and since one sees whole floors the tower seems bigger, like a house pushed up a ladder.

For more than twelve months he dismantled, torched and ground-away the top two-thirds (approximately 6.5m) of the massive 3-level dryer installation - a pair of enormous steel boxes packed with “cheese-graters” (triangular tubes with pitched-roof tops and gratings beneath emitting hot or cold air into the down-flowing grain), plus their heavy heat-exchangers, impeller motors, and ducting - its removal left fringing steel floors surrounding huge gaps.

He slept first in Mark’s apt, then on L6 (the future Kitchen) and finally in autumn ‘90 in his own proto-apt: on a small wood floor on the metal platform at the NE end - next to the big hole. In December he fell through and broke four ribs on machine-remains below. By June ‘91 he had removed the mass of metal scrap, laid complete floors and walled-out the stair - except for “details” the apt was finished.
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BRIAN APT (L1) (TWR-L4)

This level of Brian's apt will be shown below as if we are walking round it clockwise. Starting at the black SE entry door which opens into the E end sitting space ... along the S side with its huge red arch-topped Boelgakov warehouse door, under a netted ceiling hole revealing level-2 above, and towards the SW corner wc ... along the W wall past its corner sink to the big NW corner stove ... along the N wall, with its workbench backed by a cross of girders and its (open and precipitous) NE window ... and once again we are in the E end sitting space and can finally leave through the door we entered, onto the landing and up the stair to the apt's 2nd level ...


N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): ENTRY DOOR (pic 9-94 / to SE)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) E END SIT-SPACE & ENTRY (pic 6-94 / to EEN) The lower more ‘public’ floor: a sitting-place at the Ij-end of the room, lit by windows Brian had fitted into bricked-up steel-frames. Outside - a strange contrast to the interior domestic use (yet emphasising the structurality of furniture!) - are huge gesticulating tubes of an engineer’s broken work (a suction derrick) - mocked within by the delicate and precise yet amateurish central-heating tubing (ironically also useless: burned-out in its first fortnight).	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): S WALL (pic 9-94 / to S) Looking east towards the entry - the wall encasing the stairs is largely formed from doors brought from “Boelgakov”, the 17C warehouse-squat at Princengracht 491: Brian’s previous home.

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) (pic 6-94 / to SE) The upright-mounted sheet and the silver tray hung by springs in a table-frame [see next pic] are music instruments - electronically wired and to be stroked or beaten.	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) (pic 6-94 / to E)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): S WALL LOADING DOOR (pic 6-94 / to SSE) This huge red 17th C loading-door brought from Boelgakov's facade still serves as both wall and ingress for bulky items raised up the tower's hoist-hole.

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): CEILING & NET-HOLE (pic 9-94 / to SSW) Brian left a gap between the apt’s two levels: “I wanted one space not two”; the net is recreational “for lazy summers”, sometimes there is only a connecting rope - the size of the dryer that once passed down through the space is indicated by the wooden ceiling plus this hole.	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) (pic 9-94 / to S)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) (pic 9-94 / to SW)

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): SW CORNER WC & SINK (pic 6-94 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): W WALL SINK & STOVE (pic 9-94 / to WWN)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): WOOD-BURNING STOVE (2nd VER 1991) (pic 6-94 / to NW) The apt’s first stove was a simple steel box and used excessive wood. Before the ‘91 winter Brian rebuilt it in this complex form...intended to supply a central-heating system (installed by winter ‘92). This '91 version is length approx 1.65m / height to chimney damper wheel approx 2.3m). The stove’s dolls house charm belies its weight & complexity! - it’s a “heroic” product of the task of clearing the “Iron Tower” of its core of steel and machines. The stove's 'roof’ is a valved nozzle torched by Brian from the tower’s huge L6/7 delivery-hopper - inverted and secured only by its weight this caps a complex box cut from bucket-conveyor ducting, welded to a massive steel found-table. Lit at the door-side, the fire’s heat is drawn around the far end of a centre division and returns to the front through a zigzag of baffles, then up and to the back again across a shallow (10cm) steel ‘loft’ in which lies a snake-like tube (the heated portion of a long circuit serving two rads), finally it exits up a hole into the chimney-roof where a wheel- controlled damper regulates the flow. The red ‘over-pressure tank’, water-pump and pipes were street-found. The system succeeded in warming the big room, but alas only for two weeks - unnoticed corrosion on the water ‘snake-tube’ burned through (flooding the stove) - welded-in, it defeated Brian’s energy to mend and he abandoned water heating.

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): WOOD-BURNING STOVE (3rd VER 1995) (pic 11-97 / to WWS) In ‘95 the monsterous 2nd version stove was replaced with a non-water-heating 'conventional' stove: a version of the Silo’s most efficient recent type: Koik’s multi-tier model.	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): THE N WALL & NW CORNER (pic 6-94 / to WWN) This lower floor is multi-functional, much of it workshop. We look west from its sitting-place to the room’s rear where the ‘doll’s-house’ steel stove stands on stiff legs against the scarlet wall. The kitsch chandelier is street-found, the three-legged steel table was made to weld on; the black drum (table) is a very strong ‘circus’ model; wall-mounted to the right of the work-bench are two ‘buckets’ from a vertical conveyor. The oddly domestic windows were in situ.	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): N WALL - CENTRE (pic 9-94 / to NNW)

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): N WALL WORK-BENCH - CENTRE (pic 6-94 / to NNW)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) - N WALL WORK-BENCH CENTRE DETAIL (pic 6-94 / to NNW) Between the windows, at the work-bench’s centre: an accumulation over time of different degrees and types of order and purpose - focused by its largest element: the central junction of the wall-bracing frame of this flimsy brick and thin-steel tower. The machine-part with the metal horn (of dried flowers) may be a Silo factory hooter.	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): ALL FROM SW CORNER (pic 9-94 / to NE)

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): NE CORNER OF SIT-SPACE (pic 9-94 / to NE)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) SIT-SPACE (N-HALF) & N-WINDOW OPEN (pic 6-94 / to EEN)	N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L) SIT-SPACE N-WINDOW OPEN (pic 6-94 / to NE)

N-TOWER (L4) BRIAN APT (1st L): SIT-SPACE TO ENTRY DOOR (pic 9-94 / to SSE)


N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 9-94 / to E) This level's black entry door [pic rt] opens from a narrow landing 'bridge' between stair and hoist-hole. The stair continues in a new orientation, rising to the NNW, filling a triangular block at the floor's SE corner.	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to W) E-end of apt from entry-door. The bed is on the metal frame of an L2 sieving machine. The ceiling is carpeted against heat-loss and dust that falls through the Kitchen’s floor above. The wash-basin was (elegantly) plumbed in ...	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to NW)

N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): FROM NET-HOLE TO CURTAINED-BED (pic 9-94 / to NE) Bed is mosquito-curtained ....	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): FROM NET-HOLE TO SOUND STUDIO (pic 9-94 / to W)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to NW) Netted floor-hole to ....

N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): N PIER & PAPERS (pic 6-94 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to WWS) Netted floor-hole to ...

N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to W)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L) (pic 6-94 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): SOUND SUDIO (pic 6-94 / to NW) The room's W end is a sound-studio

N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): SOUND STUDIO WORKPLACE (pic 6-94 / to WWS)	N-TOWER (L5) BRIAN APT (2nd L): SOUND WORKPLACE BENCH (pic 6-94 / to NNW) A bench at the sound-studio end of the room: instruments may be played with various tools such as the paint-brush and hammer. Objects placed unconsciously in positions of use, have a precision of position and relation that via ’intentional-design’ is equalled only by ’discoveries’.