"The Second Coming of the silos will be abstract mysterious"
Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.
If you've never given much thought to all the cool things you could do with an abandoned silo, well...you didn't grow up in Kansas, did you? Personally, I had a great plan for a scuba-through aquarium (with whales!) that really could have gotten off the ground if someone had ponied up the seed money back when I was 5.
With a recent architectural design contest to revamp a couple of former sewage treatment plan silos into cultural landmarks, the Amsterdam City Council seems to be going for something a bit more practical than my old grain silo dreams. The ArchiCentral blog has some great renderings of the entry by NL Architects, which includes a "Cultural Silo" (with theaters, gallery space, and a restaurant), and a "Climbing Silo" (with a 40-meter/131-foot-high artificial cave for rock-wall climbing enthusiasts...of which, apparently, Amsterdam has many).
BTW: The headline here, a quote from the NL Architects spokesman, roughly translates from architect-speak into English as, "This project is going to be kick-ass!"
What would you do with a retired silo? I still think the aquarium idea would be "abstract mysterious" as all hell.
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I think a silo would make a really awesome house. The whole think could have little terraces jutting out at different heights for chairs, beds etc. The whole thing would be in levels.
Tuckels, you should see the houses people have made out of retired missile silos, then. I'm having trouble finding photos this morning (again, still need coffee), but they're pretty kick ass.
In Vienna for a day a year or so ago I rounded a corner and found a massive Ballardian concrete tower in the middle of the city, called HAUS DES MEERES and with the legend SMASHED TO PIECES (IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT) painted on it, so I took a photo.
It is indeed an aquarium (House of the Seas), built inside a WW2 flak tower.
Structurally, what does your average silo look like? Can you cut a bunch of holes in it and still have it strong enough to act as a building? What about insulation? Aren't they just giant steel drums? - questions from an ignorant urbanite
In the 1930s, my cousins made a summer cottage from one:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/oschene/2223950733/in/set-72157603808253467/
I've wanted to live in silo (well, a missile silo) for a long time, but I think I'll pass on sewage treatment silos.
An old gas-silo in Germany's Duisburg has been made into a diving-centre.
http://www.tauchrevier-gasometer.de/index.html
Amsterdam must be a terrible place to be a rock climber.
I can't find any links at the moment, but small grain silos have been converted into individual art studios in San Antonio, TX.
That rendering looks like they made a little too much use of the "My lens needs cleaning" filter in Photoshop, although it does distract from the people milling about in the streets. Zombies, perhaps?
#2, a quick google search
http://www.google.com/search?q=house%20grain%20silo
turns up a bunch of silo houses. The first one looks pretty kick-ass
http://www.trendir.com/house-design/silo-house-in-utah-grain-silos-rock.html
although I think it uses purpose-built silos, rather than re-purposed ones.
Actually, they exist already:
http://kaevee.web-log.nl/photos/uncategorized/sugar_city.gif
These were part of a sugar factory (now called, how surprising 'Sugar City' and are in Halfweg, near Amsterdam. They were turned into office buildings, but occupancy is low as they are little or no public transport facilities. View must be great though...
The (former Hilton) Quaker Square Hotel in downtown Akron, OH is built in the old Quaker Oats mill where the guest rooms and parts of the lobby are inside the concrete oat silos. They don't have windows, but there is one balcony with sliding windows per room.
http://www.quakersquareakron.com
I stayed there. The rooms are a little bit dark and claustrophobic but very, very quiet.
@#4,
Cutting circles in the silo for the windows presents no issues for structural strength. In fact, the next time you fly on a plane, imagine for a moment how many holes there are in the structure of the aircraft -- there are as many as possible! There is obviously a point at which putting more holes into the structure would weaken it, but especially in the aircraft industry, those holes mean gold in terms of saving weight while still maintaining structural integrity.
Whale in a slio. Poor whale. Whales need oceans. For depth and for width. Why capture an animal for your amusement.
Better you go to the mountain than bring the mountain to you.
Rock Climbing Gym!
http://www.stoneworksrockgym.com/
Cool in the summer, cold in the winter :)
Nearly infinite possibilities for routes, extra-secure holds (no wood necessary), increased concentration factor from the cave-like surrounds..
@#9, just as I get over my fear of flying...
Considering the current real estate market, I don't anticipate a mad rush to silos anytime soon.
"Abstract mysterious"... I think I need to work that phrase into a conversation sometime this weekend. Just for my own amusement.
Also, +1 to the thought of making Maggie a perma-Boinger. She does wonderful things in a very abstract mysterious way.
I'm originally from Akron,Ohio and there was a cluster of Quaker Oats silos that were turned into a hotel years ago.
Had I a silo, then no matter what I actually used it for I'd want to dress it up as classic 50's rocket ship.
Easy. I would turn it into a fantastic and bizarre musical instrument
http://www.silophone.net/
there's already a climbing gym in a silo, in downtown oklahoma city. Most of it is still empty, though. Seeing this, I wonder why they don't turn into awesome apartments. The view would be epic. oh yeah, best use for old silos: secret lair to use in evil plans to save the world.
if you could figure out the acoustics, you could stick a platform higher up in the silo for a music venue. Fans could be on the ground level or other platforms. It would be a great novelty venue.
#6 -- It makes you wonder how a place below sea level really manages to cultivate any kind of rock climbing interest at all... now stair/ladder climbing to avoid rising sea levels, on the other hand...
Turn it into an LSD lab.
I have an idea that involves a skirmish paintball tournament during a Pink Floyd laser light show.
I'll get back to you.
An old grain silo were rebuild to student housing units in Oslo some years ago. Article in Norwegian, and some pictures: http://www.aftenposten.no/forbruker/bolig/article1735422.ece
Turning a sewage treatment plant into living space is more than an architectural feat, it's a marketing one too. "You mean this apartment used to be full of poo?" I pity the rehab team too.
Here are the San Antonio art silos...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindamade/41279105/
Moriarty, you're thinking of the small farm silos. The silos in this project, and in many of the larger scale projects, are the industrial buildings - sometimes called grain elevators - made of very thick reinforced concrete. Cylindrical reinforced concrete is ridiculously strong, and these are really tall. You can cut a lot of holes in them without compromising structural integrity at all, and the structure is built to be completely filled with a heavy substance (such as grain or liquid) so you could remove the majority of the wall surface and still have it be strong enough for residential or commercial use.
Here's a famous silo that is in Montreal:
http://www.cgl.uwaterloo.ca/~smann/Trips/Quebec02/silo.JPG
I have used silos for music,in 1979 we recorded etensively in oe that was so reverberant that one could sing chords.They also make great reverb tanks for recordig other instruments,where the signal is routed to the through the silo for processing
There are a ton of these in and around Ft. Worth Texas (trains used to come in, get the grain, and get out, dispensing it to other states/cities/ports). I've wanted one since I was a kid. There's a big rainbow-striped one, in particular, that strikes my fancy. Just imagine the house parties you could host in one of these things... and the amateur James Bond movies you could shoot.
As for me, I think my clients would laugh me out of the conference room if I used a phrase like "abstract mysterious" in describing their commissions... They prefer terms like "classy" and "elegant"
if anyone's curious what a real silo in the center of Amsterdam looked like when it was squatted in the '90s...
http://davecarrsmith.co.uk/D-WWW_SIL_INT.htm
(I lived there)
and guess what...
we had an art gallery, a restaurant, a bakery, wood and metal workshops and a theater group.
http://silotheater.nl
If I could have a silo as big as the ones pictured in this entry, I think the upper half would be home. The next quarter down would be the workshop, and the ground level would be the garage.
On the roof, grasses, veggies and flowers, with a tasteful fence all around it, for safety.
There are a pair of Grain Silos on the docks in Hobart Tasmania that have been converted to luxury apartments. They look quite nice but I dont think I would like the curved walls.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ron-alenka/287462664
Turn a silo cap upside down, slap a roof and a porch on it...
and call it "the Tea Kettle House"!
Carrollton, TX has had silos converted to rock-climbing for decades. This is nothing new.
The silos probably can't hold water.
Despite what is claimed in comment #31, design for grain storage is really different than design for water storage. Grain is heavy but (usually) less dense than water. Also, a tightly packed granular solid distributes force in a really different way than a true liquid -- the pressure at the bottom of a grain silo is far less than rho x g x h. If you filled one of these silos with water, it would develop cracks near the bottom very rapidly. This is why water and oil towers have a relatively small maximum height, relative to grain towers. Above that maximum effective height, if you want to increase volume, fluid towers tend to be built out rather than up, giving them a squat appearance.
So, no SCUBA fun in the silos.
The silos are not converted according to this plan, but according to a similar plan. They will be dedicated to the books of Annie M.G. Schmidt, a famous Dutch children's book writer (the Astrid Lundgren of the Netherlands). There will be a theater, a restaurant, a museum, but also -at the top of one- a playground with a big slide over the neck of a giraffe. You can see a film of the project here: http://www.architectuur.nl/1016519/Een-project-uitgebreid/Annie-M.G.-Schmidt-Huis,-Amsterdam.htm (in Dutch)
BTW, Lots of old water towers are converted to homes. My niece lives in one. Every floor a room and the living floor at the top. You should see her legs.
Climbing wall eh?
Staggeringly creative.
Here in Dallas, where it's 80 degrees at night and 90+ degrees during the day May-September we've converted a lot of these into indoor, air conditioned climbing rooms. There's a grain silo right at the junction of I-30 and Highway 75 near downtown Dallas that people are always talking about converting the "penthouse" area into an apartment with the best view in downtown. It's been abandoned for ages.
The old flour mill silos in Sydney's inner city suburb of Newtown have been converted to luxury apartments. Here's a before:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jjprojects/338394245/
and an after:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghee/3292021035/
I think I prefer the before...
Before property prices started to plummet Copenhagen got these luxury apartments in two disused grain silos on the harbour:
http://www.cphx.dk/index.php?id=3404#/23404/
And long before that Carlsbergs old silo was turned into luxury apartments:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bladedk/857935372/
Seen over at www.sharesomecandy.com : http://tinyurl.com/deuqr9 (april 30)
all you walclimbing comments: amsterdam (or the netherlands for that matter) HAS NO HILLS/Mountains. (in fact something like 50% of the country is below sea level. if you like clibing in other countries, you wil have to train on a wall like that.