A Room for London docks on the South Bank

A Room for London docks on the South Bank

12 January, 2012
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

It's here! The pop-up one-room hotel that everyone's been waiting for...

And it's finally here. It was announced back in February 2011, then bigged up on these very pages by the Arts Council's Julie Lomax, then the first batch of tickets sold out, Glastonbury-esque, in just eleven minutes, and now, at last, it's here, with the first public guest arriving this Saturday. We're talking, of course, about A Room for London, the boat-shaped one-room pop-up hotel that's now sitting proudly atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall. And we're pleased to report that it's brilliant.

The project is the result of a collaboration between a whole host of organisations – Alain de Botton's Living Architecture and art commissioning folks Artangel primarily, as well as the Arts Council, Southbank Centre, London 2012 Festival and the Cultural Olympiad. Over 500 artists and architects from around the world entered the design competition, but it was the idea conceived by artist Fiona Banner and brilliant architect David Kohn that won the day.

The result is a kind of boat-like structure, loosely inspired by Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, as well as the history of the Thames itself. Accessed via a secret door, a painfully slow goods lift, and a sort of raised gangway, the structure – christened Roi des Belges – is a delight. Chic and arty but surprisingly homely, beautifully finished and witty, it also features a number of thoughtful solutions to nautical space issues: collapsible ladders, moving beds, a fold-up writing desk. But the real treat, unsurprisingly, is the view. Standing up 'on deck', the wind ruffles through your hair as a lone pigeon floats, gull-like, by. The good ship London rumbles on below.

Over the course of the year, guests can stay the night (the last batch of tickets goes on sale on 19th January), whilst Artangel have also curated a programme of special residencies – featuring the likes of Jeremy Deller, Jeanette Winterson, Amadou and Miriam, Juan Gabriel Vasquez and the one and only David Byrne.

If you're not lucky enough to get tickets then your other option is Ideas for London, a competition in association with the Evening Standard offering a night's stay to those with a good idea about how to improve life in the capital. Winners so far include one scheme to encourage 'at-home' gap years and another to make use of London's 40,000 long-term vacant houses.

www.aroomforlondon.co.uk

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Spoonfed Arts Team