The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), the world's largest museum of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, will open to the public on September 22. Zeitz MOCAA is located in a former grain silo at the V&A waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa.
Architects Mat Cash and Stepan Martinovsky are the project leaders from Heatherwick Studio. The new design transformed the existing building, creating a honeycomb shaped interior. The concrete tubes of the silo are topped with laminated glass, allowing natural sunlight to enter the building.
Zeitz MOCAA is a new non-profit cultural institution with a mandate to collect, preserve, research and exhibit contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Established in 2013, it is the first major institution dedicated to contemporary art in Africa.
Built in 1921, 57 meters tall, the silos processed hundreds of thousands of tons of grains over nine decades. Connected to rail infrastructure and the port, they stored corn from all over the country. The building stopped being used in the 1990s but remained an iconic element of the Cape Town skyline. At the time of construction, they were the tallest building in South Africa. Heatherwick Studio allowed this industrial building to be preserved and transformed for new uses.
Bellow is a video featuring Heatherwick Studio projects; jump to 1:14 for the MOCAA project.
8 Comments
High quality real life boolean operations, contextual architecture. Respect.
You said the same thing on Dezeen ;-) https://www.dezeen.com/2017/09/15/thomas-heatherwick-zeitz-mocaa-cape-town-art-museum-south-africa/
Love this.
OMG
Breath-taking from photos alone. Imagine what it must be like in person!
absolutely fascinating transformation..real architecture here. got my bachelors from UCT..great memories..beautiful city...
That section is great, and good to see a firm take a hit and come back strong.
Don’t worry about the Tory bridge, white elephants and conservatives have previous in London, the dome got made to work (by a Labour government).
That's what you call breathtaking.
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