The silo stood vacant for years before the redevelopment of the surrounding district created an opportunity for a new use. One of them was treated differently in Basel, Switzerland. In the Kleinbasel neighbourhood of the city, a former grain and cocoa silo reopened as Silo Erlenmatt in 2020. Today, it has studios for creative professionals, a café, a conference area, and a hostel. The ingenious element is that visitors sleep and work inside the skeleton of a warehouse that had stored cocoa beans because the historic concrete storage chambers were left in place rather than demolished.
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