Heatherwick Studio at Design Indaba

Knocking the Grain Silo down and starting over again was an option, but not a terribly appealing one to Heatherwick given the building’s idiosyncratic eight-story concrete tubes and its obvious rawness. “What are you going to make that’s more interesting?” he says.

By cutting the square and round tubes at angles—as well as the interesting bits in between—a central space will be carved out, and flooded with light from curved glass, to stay “true to the structure but fresh to the eye.”

Photo courtesy: Heatherwick Studio