Description

In South Africa, the black population were prohibited from visiting museums until 1994. With the Zeitz MOCAA at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town (named after Queen Victoria and her son Alfred), Africa now has a major museum of contemporary art that can hold its own alongside the great museums and galleries of the world. Its name Museum of Contemporary Art Africa refers to the mission to focus on art created after 2000 by African artists (resident or by origin). Jochen Zeitz, the former CEO of Puma AG, born in Mannheim in 1963, has assembled the world’s largest collection of African contemporary art with the help of the South African Mark Coetzee, who is now director and chief curator of MOCAA. The museum conversion was paid for by the V&A Waterfront Company, which continues to own and maintain the property.

The museum is housed in a magnificent grain silo dating from 1924, which was decommissioned in 1990. At the time of construction, it was the tallest building in Africa south of the equator, but as a utilitarian building in the commercial part of the port was given little attention. Nevertheless, its architectural and sculptural significance meant that after its closure demolition was out of the question. The silo complex consisted of a cluster of 42 cylinders and a cubic tower twice the height containing functional and ancillary spaces – all cast in monolithic in-situ concrete. The new MOCAA occupies all nine floors of the entire base with an area of 9500 m², 6000 of which are exhibition space. That’s an amazingly good ratio: by comparison, the MoMA has only 12,000 m² of exhibition space and a total area of 59,000 m², while Tate Modern has the same area and 35,000 m² of total space. The top 10 floors of the tower structure above the cylinders is home to the Silo Hotel.

The sensational interior of the MOCAA is its open atrium that Heatherwick has carved out of the 42 concrete cylinders. The biomorphic void slices through the 42 cylinders of the silos in the floor plan and recalls the spatial interventions of Gordon Matta-Clark. The V&A Waterfront is a central tourist and shopping destination with 24 million visitors every year, most of whom are probably not particularly interested in art. For them, the spectacular space is the central attraction of the museum. The unique foyer space can compete with any hotel lobby of the recently deceased John Portman, including its open-ended cylindrical elevator capsules and the glazed ends of the concrete cylinders.

The roughly 100 gallery rooms contrast with the genius loci and are almost entirely orthogonal to the cylinders and entirely artificially lit. The connections between the rooms and the entrances to the spaces are equipped with massive swing doors with bulky fittings. The screed floors are sealed with basement or garage sealer and the services are visible under the concrete ceilings. The wayfinding signage and escape routes are omnipresent and unsubtly arranged, so that, together with the overly large picture descriptions, they compete with the art. The visitors, it seems, are then all the more pleased to reach the elevators, stairs and walkways, where original exposed concrete and structurally necessary new additions produce exciting dialogues, where daylight spills in and interesting views are to be had through and out of the building. The grandeur of the building becomes apparent once more as one descends into the basement populated by ominous concrete cylinders and circular segments with their metal pipes, chutes and flaps preserved, retaining the building’s authentic character.

Originally published in Bauwelt 12.2018, pp. 20-25, abridged and edited for Building Types online, translated by Julian Reisenberger

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