A unique new hotel called The Silo has recently opened in Cape Town. Conceived of by visionary designer Thomas Heatherwick and his team at Heatherwick Studio, this luxury hotel used to be a historic grain silo on Cape Town?s V&A Waterfront. The silo, which was built in 1924 and spent the better part of the century as a key player in the Table Bay harbor trade system, was earmarked for redevelopment in 2013 when Heatherwick was commissioned to reimagine the industrial building as ?a not for profit cultural institution housing the most significant collection of contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora.? While the hotel itself is spectacular, it is only the first part of the larger Zeitz MOCAA development that will soon be open to the public.
The building contains 42 densely packed cylindrical silos that have been hollowed out to house the hotel and art museum. Heatherwick Studio had to work around the building’s industrial features ? and the fact that the structure was never intended to be habitable ? so they decided to convert the silos into a cathedral-like atrium to allow some light into the cavernous space while preserving some of its former glory.

The hotel sits above the soon-to-be contemporary art museum and is largely visible from the outside. A series of bulging windows has been set into the existing lengths of silos that span the building’s facade. Old floors and bays are marked by the structure’s original concrete divisions, whose hars...