The museum is located in the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront complex: the former port has been converted into a commercial development area, which is visited by up to 100,000 people a day. The only thing missing was the cultural "point of attraction", which became the Zeitz MOCAA Museum. The collection presented there belongs to the German entrepreneur Jochen Zeitz, the former CEO of Puma: these are works of African artists living at home and in exile. Zeitz MOCAA will become the world's largest museum of African contemporary art.
The elevator, now reconstructed for new needs, was built in the first half of the 1920s; until the 1990s, wheat, corn, sorghum and soybeans were stored there. With a height of 57 meters, the structure of a working tower and 42 silos is clearly visible in the landscape of Cape Town.
Elevators are inherently difficult to reconstruct, although examples of converting them into
housing or in a student dormitory are still found. In a certain sense it was more difficult with the museum, because it was necessary for him to create a quality public space. It was the atrium, "carved" by the architects in the form of an oval - grain - from part of the silo buildings: its height - 27 meters, volume - 4600 m3… The walls of the cases, only 170 mm thick, were partially reinforced with new concrete inlaid sleeves (as a result, the thickness increased to 420 mm), and the cut line was polished to emphasize the difference between the old and the updated texture. The top of the "atrium" cylinders was glazed: they make up most of the surface of the sculpture garden, which is open on the roof of the museum. The surface of the glass is covered with a fritted pattern to protect it from the sun's rays, inspired by the "Space Alphabet" by the African artist El Loko.
The walls of the rest of the silo buildings in the interior were removed, instead of them 80 neutral halls with a total area of 6,000 m2 appeared2… Works of art created especially for them will be shown in the underground tunnels.
The proportions of the elevator's working tower were not suitable for turning into an art gallery, so it was used as a beacon: the upper part of its walls was replaced with convex glass panels reminiscent of Venetian glass lanterns.
A new museum with a total area of 9500 m2 and nine floors high, in addition to the exhibition halls and the atrium, it includes the premises of the Institute of Costume, centers for photography, video, curatorship, performance and art education. There is also a storage room, restoration workshops, a bookstore, reading rooms, a bar and a restaurant. The project budget is R500 million (£ 30 million).
