We started our day at 9AM by hopping on our bus and traveling to the Clocktower District. This area is located within the V&A Waterfront, and is home to the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, or Zeitz MOCAA. The district has many shops and office buildings, none of which we had time for at the moment as we were just walking around. Some points of interest we noted for later were the African Trading Port and a shopping plaza with restaurants for dinner.

While we could not go into shops due to time constraints, we were able to spend our time well before entering the Zeitz MOCAA. We saw a public art exhibit, “The Rhinos are Coming”, which featured 10 rhino sculptures. Each rhino sculpture was painted by a different South African artist with the intent of bringing awareness to rhino poaching. In addition, there was a playground that some of us took liking to. Izak, Joie, and Max had a competition to see who could go down the slides the fastest, while Matt was proud to show us his best Spider-Man pose.


After our time browsing the Clocktower district, we went into the Zeitz MOCAA. Immediately all of our attention was brought to how beautiful the building was. The building’s facade had interesting windows and inside there was a grand opening. The opening was interesting as it looked as if someone had taken a bunch of concrete cylinders and carved out the opening that we were looking at. Another aspect of the lobby space that was appreciated by us was that in addition to a donor wall, there was a wall that listed the names of the construction workers who helped bring the building to life. After looking around, we were then greeted by the museum staff who brought us to the lower level to start us on our architectural tour of the building.

The tour started by learning information about the history of the building. The museum used to be a grain silo and was constructed from 1921-1924 with the labor of around 1000 workers. 42 grain silos were constructed in a 6×7 layout, each to an elevation of 32m from ground level and having a diameter of 5.5m to 6m each. These structures were all made of concrete, and the concrete pour only took 14 days! The concrete pour was continuous and involved the use of 340 tons of reinforcing steel, 17,500 pounds of Portland cement, and 4,800 cubic yards of concrete. Calculating a rate for the concrete pour, about 350 cubic yards of concrete were poured a day. In addition to the silos, an elevator building was constructed to the height of 54m. The grain silos were fully operational until 1995, when it switched to being used for South African internal purposes until its closing in 2001.

The site of the grain silos was not used until it was deemed a heritage site by the government so it could be preserved. After this, debate took place over what to do with the site until Jochen Zeitz, former Puma CEO, took a liking to turning the site into something new. After approaching architect Thomas Heatherwick, his architect studio fostered an image to turn the silos and elevator building into an art gallery. The building was constructed from 2014-2017, which mirrors the timeframe it took to originally construct the silos. Where we were standing was inside of a carved out portion of the silos, which fascinated us. The negative space is supposed to resemble a cob of corn, as corn represents the grain that was processed through the silos. In order to have the structure hold up with all the carving out, the silos were thickened. This brought out an interesting feature Professor Ignacio pointed out. If you were to look at the different parts of the concrete around us, it is easy to see the differences in the forms used. For straight runs of concrete, straight wood forms were used, but for the cylindrical silos, vertical forms were used as wood can’t be bent. This is characteristic of the 1920s construction. Now if you were to look at the new cylindrical pours of the silo thickening, you could see the new types of forms used as better technology exists for cylindrical pours now.

After this introduction, we were taken to the roof, which was level with the top of the silos. We were able to take photos and enjoy the scenery. It was a great opportunity to stand here and enjoy the sights of the city and stand on top of the silos. The top of the silos were covered with glass so we could stand on and look down into the museum. After this, we were let loose to enjoy the museum.

The museum itself was very neat and had a lot to offer. For the community, there were many classrooms that are used to educate students and nearby organizations. Additionally the art in the museum did not offer just South African art, but also art from around the African continent. We greatly enjoyed looking at this art as it made us experience different themes of African history and culture. An exhibit of note was a temporary exhibit, “Understudies” by Nolan Oswald Dennis. This exhibit took objects and put them in a different perspective. Whether it was an art piece of a globe upside down or using a gourd as a substitute sphere for a globe, the art was fascinating.

After some time in the museum, some students stayed in the museum while some went to the African Trading Post to buy souvenirs. We all convened at noon and ate a packed lunch from Ivy’s Kitchen before departing for Robben Island.

After coming back from Robben Island we were able to spend more time in the Clocktower district. Some of us went to shops and some went to walk around the district, but we all met at the Tiger Milk Restaurant to eat dinner. We all enjoyed each other’s company and then decided to go to The Cape Wheel, a ferris wheel. It was here we were able to meet some students from the Gies College of Business! Hannah and Ariana were also here on a study abroad trip and it was such a coincidence that we were able to bump into them. We all got gelato together and that is where we ended our day.
Blog by Alejandro Fernandez