A space that once held 5,000 tons of corn, grains, and wheat has just undergone a surgical transformation that’s turned it from an industrial complex into a new hotel. Now open in Bremen, Germany, the John & Will Silo Hotel is a unique repurposing of the silos of a former Kellogg’s cereal factory. Hulking concrete structures that enabled decades of breakfast cereal production are now luxe, if quirky, accommodations for travelers.
It’s a strange second life for a former cereal factory, but it’s also part of a 600-acre urban redevelopment project in the industrial area of Bremen, located along the Weser river. The former Kellogg’s factory, with a silo-topping sign that’s become a local landmark, is the project’s visual centerpiece.
The design comes from Vienna-based Delugan Meissl Associated Architects (DMAA), who worked with the project’s developer to preserve and reuse the factory as part of a new commercial and residential district known as Überseestadt.
“The possibility of demolishing the building was never up for discussion,” says Eva Schrade, senior project manager at DMAA. She says the idea of converting the structure into a hotel came during an evening brainstorming session with the client, which was considering turning the silos into some kind of sports center, like a climbing gym. The architects offered a more challenging alternative. “The structure of the round rooms is unusual for a hotel, but the task was all the more exciting,” Schrade says.
The 130-foot silo shells now contain 117 circular and semicircular hotel rooms. Winding interior hallways run along their curves inside the structure, and the round walls of the silos frame bedrooms, seating areas, and even showers. Horizontal bands of windows have been cut through the silo walls to give hotel guests wide views of the river and city beyond. The raw concrete of the silo structure lent itself to the minimalist interior design of the hotel, with spare furnishings and steel-framed fixtures.
It’s not the first time grain silos have found new purpose. Grain silos in Cape Town, South Africa, have been used for a contemporary art museum. Some DIY designers have even turned smaller-scale grain silos into boutique hotel suites.
The Bremen project is on a much larger scale, and therefore involved a bigger lift. Physically carving up the building was labor-intensive. The concrete walls of the silos are more than 6 inches thick. To keep the building structurally sound, the architects had to preserve a significant amount of the structure of the silos themselves, both their exterior shells and the partition walls between them. Bracing walls had to be added inside smaller rooms, as well as the insulation that the silos’ previous life holding corn and grain did not require.
Despite the significant changes to the structure, the architects sought to ensure the silos still presented as silos. “Inside, all interventions were to remain visible as far as possible. The raw concrete floors were only cleaned and the cuts were left visible,” Schrade says.
Beyond the hotel rooms, many of the building’s original details were kept intact, including steel bracing inside a penthouse bar and the original funnel-shaped outlets of the silos, which hang overhead in the hotel lobby. Another original feature no one wanted to lose is the building’s towering Kellogg’s sign on the roof. “Many Bremen residents have a long-standing connection with the company,” Schrade says. The hope is the hotel conversion will give Bremen a new kind of connection with this building.
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