The Silo Hotel

For most of the twentieth century the grain silo at the Cape Town docks was the tallest building in sub-Saharan Africa, a 57-metre concrete tower built in 1924 to load wheat and maize onto ships. It fell idle in 2001. In 2017 it reopened twice over: in March as The Silo Hotel, in the six storeys of the former elevator house, and in September as the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in the 42 storage tubes below.

History

The V&A Waterfront, which owns the silo, commissioned Thomas Heatherwick's studio in 2011 to turn the complex into a museum for the collection of Jochen Zeitz, the former chief executive of Puma. The hotel on top was taken on by The Royal Portfolio, the family company of Liz and Phil Biden, whose first property was the safari lodge Royal Malewane. Liz Biden designed the interiors herself, as she had at every Royal Portfolio house. The hotel opened on 1 March 2017, six months before the museum beneath it, and has operated independently of the gallery since, sharing only the lift core and the building's name.

Architecture and design

Heatherwick's intervention on the elevator house was to cut the small windows of the 1924 building into large openings and fill them with faceted glass that bulges outward, so that each window looks like a pillow pressed against the frame. At night the tower glows from the inside. The grain-handling machinery was stripped out and the concrete left raw in the corridors and the lift lobbies. Inside the rooms Liz Biden went the other way, with saturated colour, printed fabrics, chandeliers and contemporary African art from the family collection, so that each room looks different from the next. The sixth-floor public rooms open onto a terrace and the rooftop above holds a pool with a glass balustrade facing Table Mountain.

Rooms and suites

The hotel has 28 rooms, from Luxury Rooms on the lower floors to the Penthouse, which occupies the top of the tower with a private terrace and a view across the harbour to the mountain. The Royal Suites and Family Suites have two bedrooms. Every room has the pillowed windows, floor-to-ceiling glass and a view either of the docks and Table Bay or of the city and the mountain behind it.

Dining

The Granary Café on the sixth floor serves breakfast, lunch and dinner to guests and to outside visitors, with a terrace over the harbour. The Willaston Bar, named after the first ship to load grain from the silo, occupies the same floor and does the cocktails. The rooftop has a bar beside the pool for guests only. The Vault, in the base of the tower, holds the hotel's own art collection and is used for private dinners.

Wellness

The Silo Spa, with treatment rooms on an upper floor, a gym and the rooftop pool, is small and reserved for guests.

Weddings and events

The Silo hosts weddings and private dinners rather than conferences. The Vault, with its art collection, and the rooftop terrace with the pool are the two spaces usually taken, and the Penthouse is used for small receptions. Capacities are not large; a wedding of a few dozen guests fits, a wedding of several hundred does not. Meetings are held in the Vault or in the private dining room of the Granary Café.

Location

The Silo stands at the eastern end of the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, in the Silo District, with the museum below and the harbour on three sides. Cape Town International Airport is about 20 minutes away by road outside rush hour; Cape Town railway station is a ten-minute drive. The Waterfront's shops, the Two Oceans Aquarium and the ferry to Robben Island are all within the district. As a luxury hotel in Cape Town it has the city's most recognisable building and the museum attached to it.