Building the Africa's Museum of Contemporary Art

in Capetown British designer Thomas Heather wick has carved a gallery out of a historic green silo to create the largest Art Museum in Africa in the shadow of Table Mountain or one of the world's most famous shorelines the grain silo has been a prominent feature on Cape Town skyline since it was 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 continents first institution devoted to contemporary art named the Museum of Contemporary Arts Africa or MOCA for short the facility contains former Pima CEO Jochen Z's collection of Contemporary Art from across the African continent at the heart of this new facility is a spectacular cathedral-like atrium that has been carved out of the stoic building's 42 original convey silos the two major buildings of the original grain silo complex were a storage annex which consisted of 42 vertical concrete tubes each 33 metres tall around 110 feet and a 58 metre elevator tower made up of a number of square silo bins into these buildings 6000 square metres of gallery space equivalent to 65,000 square feet together with a rooftop sculpture garden art conservation facility bookshops restaurant and a luxury hotel have been inserted to create the gallery heather wick 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 us the museum was literally carved from the existing building and the process saw a huge amount of deconstruction take place in total 73 percent 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 lowest six floors of the elevator tower why 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 has a relatively modest budget of 40 million u.s. dollars heather wake decided to concentrate on creating one standouts interior elements 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 ovoid shape of the atrium the stretches are 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 cinders to reinforce the parts of each cylinder that now remain these sleeves were then used as the templates for cutting away the old concrete which was removed using both machinery and hand techniques depending on the geometry and density of each section while thicker segments were cut using diamond rope cable source and double blade source thinner segments were sliced using a 1 meter diameter circular saw as the shape was difficult to visualize on sites that contracture relied on GPS and laser technology to ensure cuts were made in the correct locations in total a staggering 1 kilometer of concrete was cast during the deconstruction process to create the new atrium the concrete cuts were then polished to create visible difference between the original concrete's with is thicker aggregates and the smooth concrete of the Neuse leaves now complete the atrium is the spectacular heart of the new museum that is itself the centerpiece of a 250 million u.s. dollar new district containing offices shops and apartments if you enjoyed this video and would like to get more in the definitive video channel for construction subscribe to the BLM

Channel: The B1M

Views: 45,929

Keywords: BIM, B1M, TheB1M, Construction, Heatherwick, Heatherwick studio, MOCAA, South Africa, Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town, Fred Mills, The B1M, Silo, Grain Silo, Africa Museum, Africa Art Gallery, Contempoary Art Gallery, Thomas Heatherwick, Grain silo conversion, Concrete, architecture

Id: SNQy9O5L_dE

Length: 5min 10sec (310 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017