NDSM

This guide to NDSM in Amsterdam opens in 1910, when a small tanker called the Vulcanus slid into the IJ River from this shipyard as the world's first sea-going diesel-powered ship, at a moment when nobody was sure the new engine would survive open water. It follows the yard's decades building ships for the Dutch East Indies trade, its closure in 1979 as cheaper labour elsewhere took the orders, and the artists and squatters who moved into the silent hangars through the 1990s. They formed a foundation called Kinetisch Noord and took their case to city hall.