Inside A Grain Silo Transformed Into An Urban Oasis

[happy upbeat music]

I became very interested in the spaces

that we all find ourselves in the majority of the time.

We live in homes and these homes,

they can just be a box that you walk

inside of and crash out on a bed,

but they can also be things that really feed your soul

in a way and architecture has the ability to do that.

What we're looking at is a 1955 grain silo.

These were dappled across the agricultural landscape

of America and used by farmers to dry grain or corn.

We're in downtown Phoenix and specifically,

we're in Garfield Historic District.

It's a little unexpected because we're surrounded

by Mesquite trees, we're in this garden setting,

and yet we are less than a half mile

from the tallest building in the city.

The original inspiration for the silo house,

a little bit of serendipity.

I was looking actually for a garden shed

and I came across somebody selling a kit of parts

that was for a grain silo.

Ending up purchasing it, built it,

and all the while as this things started to take shape,

I began to think about, could I craft a home

for people to live in inside of this thing?

This project was dear to my heart

also because it was for me.

I lived here personally for 18 months and this was something

that was a joy to live in.

I'm Christoph Kaiser.

This is the silo house.

This is the interior of the silo home.

So we're standing right now in the kitchen/dining area.

When designing a kitchen for such a small space,

there are appliances, there's utensils,

there's so many things that you have to work

into the space and the big challenge here

was eliminating or minimizing visual clutter

and so there's a lot of layers here.

Almost like the skin of an onion.

So right here we're looking at a panel

that can accommodate utensil storage,

cutting board storage, there's a television.

Behind this panel is a full size refrigerator

and then moving further,

right here this is a gas range

that we had custom water jet

cut out of a solid piece of half inch plate steel.

When designing not just the kitchen,

but all of these spaces down here,

we ended up doing a digital model

that was very precise because when you're dealing

with a space this tight, the door swing,

is it intersecting with another door swing,

doing cabinets that pull out on a radius

is a very tricky thing to work out to make sure

that you don't have intersecting rails.

There are other silo houses out there in the world

and I feel like many of them will insert

flat walls and straight cabinets

and that's something that I really didn't wanna do.

I wanted everything about the interior to be of one breath

with the exterior on the silo

and so there's no straight lines.

[upbeat music]

This is one of my favorite spots in the silo house.

This is a custom sofa that we fabricated

to match the outside radius of the silo.

Sitting here, you're looking up 26 feet into the cone

and beyond that, the oculus,

and it's just a great spot with a lot of verticality

and at night you can actually sit here and stargaze,

which is pretty beautiful.

[upbeat music]

So here we're gonna check out the bathroom.

The bathroom, much like aspects of the kitchen,

is hidden away.

It's something that you don't know

is there unless you need it.

So the plan of the bathroom in the silo house

is a somewhat dimension three foot by nine foot plan.

The difference is that we've taken that rectangle

and we've arced it and within that sort of arced rectangle

we have our shower and then we have the toilet

with the vanity directly on axis.

This was a custom piece where we created what we call

a shadow box and emerging from that shadow box,

we have our faucet, we have a sink,

and then over here we have the same set up.

The toilet is emerging also from a shadow box

that above it have something similar to a medicine cabinet,

but in this case it's additional toilet paper

and towels and that kind of thing.

So next, we're gonna take a walk up these stairs

and check out the second floor.

[upbeat music]

So this is the sleeping mezzanine of the silo house.

And similar to the downstairs, we have millwork

that wraps the south side of the space

and many of these walnut panels are fixed.

This one actually has our mechanical chase inside of it.

And a lot of these other panels are custom doors

that have magnetic latches on them.

The small doors, strangely,

are much harder to build that the big ones.

When you're moving into a place like this,

you have to pare down and the fact that you have three

pairs of pants or three pairs of shoes,

there's something very liberating

in not having so many options.

So there are so many cool things

that are packed into this southern wall of the silo house.

Behind this panel here, there's actually the subwoofer

for the sound system, there's satellite speakers

that live in the air registers,

and then the top of this cabinet piece,

I wanted to be a light trough that just illuminates

the cone of the silo.

One of my favorite aspects of this upstairs

is this window.

This is the slot window

that is also the front door on the first level.

So from this window here, we can see ASU,

downtown, UVA downtown,

we can see the tallest building in Phoenix.

This view the the skyline from a very intimate bedroom

setting is something that I think is one of the more

special aspects of the silo.

Second to that is downstairs, where we're gonna head next.

There's a large radius door

that really allows the interior

of the silo to bleed into the exterior.

Let's go check that out.

[gentle music]

So this is the outdoor patio of the silo house.

Similar to the inside, there's different sections

or realms, we have outdoor living,

we have outdoor dining.

This is the garden.

So this is for, like if you're cooking dinner

you can grab some rosemary,

some basil, some cilantro, this is thyme.

On the back edge, these are kumquat trees.

Another aspect of this outdoor space.

I didn't want the radius geometry of the silo

to stop at the silo and so you see that picked up

on in these garden beds

and again, the slat wall that's directly behind that

as a backdrop to the entire scene

and really allowing that radius

to take your eyes around the space

and for it to be a continuous backdrop

to whether you're in sort of this lounge area

or the dining space.

So right here there's a custom water feature

that we designed and had fabricated.

This is about making a transformative experience,

so when you hear the sound of the water feature,

it drowns out the sounds of the city beyond

and it really transports you

and puts you in a new environment.

A little bit further behind me is an outdoor shower.

There is some redundancy in the sort of program

that's offered in the interior and the exterior

and that was intentional.

I wanted very much for the outdoors

to offer a lot of what's offered in the inside,

being able to shower underneath the shade

of a Mesquite tree while being in a botanical garden

is a lot of what this particular experience

in this particular context offers.

[upbeat music]

Thank you for letting me give you a tour of the silo house.

As you can see, a lot goes into designing round.

I've lived in a few different tiny homes now

and with each one of those,

there's a simplicity of life

that gives back to you

in a way that's sort of unexpected.

I've lived here for 18 months

and as of recently, the silo house is available on Airbnb.

If you're in the area and you'd like to experience

to silo house for yourself,

come check us out.