Hands On

Floating City

BELGRADE’S GYPSY HOUSEBOATS ARE THE DWELLINGS OF THE FUTURE.

By Bruce Sterling

NATIVE TO BELGRADE’S TWO RIVERS, THE shore. Nobody will stop you from fishing the kindly Sava and the Danube, the splav is made from Danube, and even if you’re one fish-and-pepper soup repurposed industrial junk. This raffish water- away from utter destitution, everyone will think you craft probably owes a large design debt to Belgrade are amusing yourself like a city gentleman. gypsies, who are commonly scrap metal dealers. Building a houseboat on top of floating oil drums As Eastern Europe’s rock-bottom underclass, many is extremely simple and cheap. That’s why there are gypsies literally live inside Belgrade junkyards, in hundreds of splavovi — more every week. But how fantastic sheet metal huts wired together out of do people get away with doing it? anything handy. Seattle’s once-colorful Lake Union house-

So how do you make your own free-living splav boat village, which dates back to the 1890s, has houseboat? It’s intriguingly simple! First, get your long since been gentrified, Microsoftie-style. hands on some empty German chemical-industry Amsterdam’s houseboats are legally fossilized in barrels — hopefully these drums held something amber. Belgrade’s splavovi are much more modern nontoxic, such as paraffin or corn syrup. They’re animals. They evolved in an outlaw mini-state with a cheap or free, since huge barges full of German post-Communist economy in a turbulent transition. oil drums steadily ply the Danube. Then scare up This means, as a hands-on vernacular architecture, some rusty, Communist-era angle iron from any of they have a uniquely favorable economic, political, the city’s many junkyards. and legal environment.

Take the German drums and the Yugoslav iron This richness of creative opportunity has caused to a local marina at riverside. Weld the angle iron the splavovi to break up into several different species. into a tight box that traps 12 or 15 of the watertight drums. Throw down some cheap wooden flooring over this buoyant iron foundation, then nail up a frame and a roof, doors and windows.

Launch your splav and have it towed. Find some spot on the shore that seems unclaimed, pound in a literal iron stake, tie a hawser to that, and you have staked your claim!

Further refinements are entirely up to you. Hanging dead rubber tires off the rim of your splav is a cordial touch, since friends with boats may visit, and these fenders will spare their hulls.

Of course you will have no mailing address, but you may be able to steal some electrical power, as that’s not well policed. Flowered window boxes are a gracious touch. If you’re a migrant fresh from the village, or a displaced Balkan refugee, you might also plant a little subsistence garden on the

Basic Splav This is poverty slum-housing, over water. Somebody’s trying to make a full-time go of life on a splav, for lack of other choices. They may be refugees, smugglers, artists, drunks, poachers, visionaries, migrants, or retired on a nonexistent pension. Their lives are pretty hard, and they look it.

Recreational Splav This one was thrown together as a cute, toy, floating summerhouse by someone who enjoys the river. Rarely visited by their owners, who generally have real jobs and other homes, these splavovi often mildew or catch fire.

Speakeasy Splav This is what happens when the inhabitants of the Basic Splav catch on to the unique legal advantages of their situation. No taxes, no licenses, no fire-safety codes ... no identity. Why

Photograph by Bruce Sterling

30 Make: Volume 12