Building the Africa’s Museum of Contemporary Art — Transcript

In Cape Town, British designer Thomas Heatherwick has carved a gallery out of a historic grain silo to create the largest

built in 1921.

The tallest building in Sub-Saharan Africa for over half a century, the grain silo has now been creatively reinvented as a vast new art museum, the continent's first institution.

spectacular cathedral-like atrium that has been carved out of the historic building's 42 original concrete silos.

The two major buildings on the original grain silo complex were a storage annex, which consisted of 42 vertical concrete tubes, each 33 meters tall, around 110 feet, and a 58-meter elevator tower, made up of a number of square silo bins.

Into these buildings, 6,000 square meters of gallery space, equivalent to 65,000 square feet, together with a rooftop sculpture garden, art conservation facility, bookshops, restaurant, and luxury hotel have been inserted.

To create the gallery, Heatherwick had to be extremely inventive, as the original building contained no open spaces, and as the designer himself stated, tubes are quite rubbish for showing art.

The museum was literally carved from the existing building, and the process saw a huge amount of deconstruction take place.

In total, 73% of the original silo bins have been demolished, and 50% of the original grain elevator building has been removed.

White box gallery spaces have been inserted into much of the silo building and the lower six floors of the elevator tower, where a hotel occupies the upper floors.

However, by far the star of the show is the spectacular main atrium that has been excavated within the densely packed concrete tubes of the storage annex.

As the not-for-profit cultural institution had a relatively modest budget of 40 million US dollars, Heatherwick decided to concentrate on creating one standout interior element.

While the exterior of the building remained largely intact, the internal atrium was intended to lure people in to see the art.

Acting as the heart of the building, this atrium connects all the gallery spaces, contains the vertical circulation routes, and is set to host monumental interventions, in a similar manner to the Turbine Hall at London's Tate Modern.

Creating this spectacular space was no easy task, and is the result of almost 3 million man-hours of work.

The starting point was a single grain of corn that was digitally scanned and enlarged to create the oval shape of the atrium that stretches up 27 meters.

To cut the shape from the tubes, they first had to be reinforced, as the fragile 1920s concrete silos were just 180 millimeters thick. A new sleeve of concrete, 250 millimeters thick, was cast inside each of the cylinders to reinforce the parts of each cylinder that now remain.

These sleeves were then used as the template for cutting away the old concrete, which was removed using both machinery and hand techniques, dependent on the geometry and density of each section.

While thicker segments were cut using diamond rope cable saws and double-blade saws, thinner segments were sliced using a 1-meter diameter circular saw.

As the shape was difficult to visualize on site, the contractor relied on GPS and laser technology to ensure cuts were made in the correct locations.

In total, a staggering 1 kilometer of concrete was cut during the deconstruction process to create the new atrium.

The concrete cuts were then polished to create visible difference between the original concrete with its thicker aggregate and the smooth concrete of the new sleeves.

Now complete, the atrium is the spectacular heart of the new museum that is itself the centerpiece of a 250 million US dollar new district containing offices, shops, and apartments. If you enjoyed this video and would like to get more from the definitive video channel for construction, subscribe to The B1M.