Looming over Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront – a mixed-use development bordering the Atlantic and interwoven with colonial structures and contemporary volumes in glass and steal – is a concrete silo. Built in 1912, it was where grain would be gathered, graded and eventually disseminated. This was the tallest building in sub-Saharan Africa for half a century, and as such, a defining feature of the city’s skyline. Designed with a view that it would last forever, it nonetheless fell into disuse in 2001, eventually ravaged by floods, plunderers and bird droppings.
