[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.