Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa

Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront has plenty competing for attention, yet Zeitz MOCAA manages to stop you before you have even seen the art. Its monumental concrete shell began life as a grain silo, completed in 1924 and, at the time, the tallest building in Southern Africa. For decades, wheat, maize, soya and sorghum arrived here by rail to be sorted, stored and shipped from the harbour.

When Heatherwick Studio converted the disused complex into a museum, demolition would have been easier. Instead, they worked with its 42 tightly packed concrete tubes, carving a vast atrium straight through them. The unlikely template was a single grain of corn, digitally enlarged and used to determine the cut. Standing inside, surrounded by curved walls of exposed concrete, the logic suddenly makes wonderfully eccentric sense.

Opened in 2017, Zeitz MOCAA spreads contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora across nine floors, with galleries appearing between remnants of the silo’s industrial anatomy. Faceted windows swell from the old grading tower, framing Cape Town and flooding the interior with changing light. It is one of those museums where the architecture occasionally steals your attention from the exhibition, and gets away with it.