Unit 11
Many of you have heard about or seen our kitchen table and the chaotic workspace in the basement. For years now we’ve managed to make our beautiful modules from home, in production sprints of a few weeks at a time.
We have also been working on designing a keyboard for the past two years now and we’ve always known the production of this wasn’t going to fit in our house anymore. So we’ve been looking at various places to set up our future factory floor. We found this place just when we are about ready to start ordering aluminium profiles and are finalising key moulds.
Unit W0.11 in the Centrale Markthal.
The Centrale Markthal building is the former farm-to-market connection of Amsterdam. Built in the 1930s and protected as a monument but it has stood empty for a long time. A giant inner courtyard is flanked by 12 two-storey former warehouses for fruits and vegetables on either side and two more layers of offices above them. The foundation BOEi that bought the Centrale Markthal about five years ago has done some work on the warehouses on the westside. They put in new double doors both to the massive inner courtyard and to the outside, they put in isolated wooden floors and they connected each warehouse to water and electricity.
When we received the keys of our future factory there was much to be done. No one had occupied this space for about twenty years. The wall next to our stairs was still covered in old tar and cork insulation, there is an internal hook-and-trapdoor situation and one insanely heavy metal door downstairs. Some of the old elements are protected and must be kept as is. Others can be removed or adapted.
We scraped and chiselled and cleaned, dusted and vacuumed and dusted again. We connected the old toilet to the new water. It’s first flush was quite exciting. We replaced old waterpipes with new copper ones and a simple faucet. The experience made me appreciate functioning indoor plumbing all over again.
We filled various holes in the walls and washed walls and ceilings until they were clean enough to paint. We have touched every centimetre of this space at least twice. After painting (shout out to Little Greene) we laid all the electrical and the flooring.
With the space comes a little wooden house that was probably the cashiers place back when it was a wholesalers. We built a support structure in it so that it is now safe to stand on and are rebuilding the doors and the windows. We hid away other doors that connect us to the neighbours warehouse with rockwool and wooden panels. We also hid the cork and tar wall behind wood panels.
In just one intense month on our hands and knees, endlessly climbing up and down ladders or on a scaffold reaching for the ceiling, we managed to make this space ready for another adventure. We managed this only with a lot of help from our friends and we are very grateful to everyone that cleaned, scraped, painted and floored with us.
Finally it was time to start bringing things in like desks and synthesizers. On this adventure with us is Binkhorst Creations, who we are making the keyboards with. Vaski who we’ve made the Fenix IV with, also has a desk in our office. There is still space for one more audio/art company. A space with three desks and floor to ceiling storage.
At our opening party various artist brought in the last thing that was missing: Music.
When I heard the intricate audio layers from RAAF modular in our little office space it hit me.
We are here now.
Our new visiting addres is
This is Not Rocket Science
Centrale Markthal Amsterdam W0.11
Centrale Groothandelsmarkt 186
1051 LJ Amsterdam
The Netherlands
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