Photographs by Charles HoseaThe boat-shaped “A Room for London” perches atop the Queen Elizabeth Hall at the Southbank Centre in London.A wonderfully surreal vision comes into view as you walk across Waterloo Bridge: a boat moored atop the Southbank Centre’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. And this is not just any boat. A collaboration between the architect David Kohn and the artist Fiona Banner, it is part sculpture, part micro-hotel. “A Room for London,” as it is known, is the result of a design competition run by two inspired clients — Living Architecture, which commissions and rents vacation houses designed by cutting-edge architects, and Artangel, which commissions contemporary art projects — to offer a unique, one-bedroom accommodation with some of the best views in London, and a program of live performances and events. (“A Room for London” has a one-night, two-person limit, and rates start at 120 pounds, or about $185.65.)
One of the first guests to stay in the wood-lined boat was the architect himself, who was excited both by the project and the design process. “I had long wanted to collaborate with an artist,” says Kohn, who had done installation drawings for Banner’s “Harrier and Jaguar” project at Tate Britain in 2010. “We approached the competition as an opportunity to experiment, and being shortlisted and then winning were like extraordinary bonuses.”
The design originated from surprisingly practical concerns. The roof on which it perches has limited access, and the budget was tight. Kohn explains, “We knew that it would ideally be built off-site and craned into place. This would also mean that the journey from the place of its construction to London and on to the roof would be a significant aspect of the project.” This inspired Kohn and Banner to look at famous journeys of the past, and ultimately to the Congo riverboat captained by Joseph Conrad, which inspired his novel “Heart of Darkness.”
Inside, the prow of the “boat” contains a window seat for reading or admiring the view.“I had read the book as a teenager and was very affected by its exquisite prose and brooding nature,” Kohn says. “Fiona has regularly referenced the text in her work, in particular its adaptation in ‘Apocalypse Now,’ Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 Vietnam movie. The book is narrated aboard a yacht moored on the banks of the River Thames. This fit well with our desire to create a vessel that would be a place in which to create new narratives, to think about one’s place in the contemporary world.”
“A Room for London” is already fully booked until the end of June; reservations for July through December go on sale on January 19. And what happens after 2012? “It is undecided, but I very much hope it will travel the world,” Kohn replies. “I imagine it on a barge, sailing up rivers and into ports — Cape Town, Hong Kong, Manila — who knows? One of my favorite architecture projects is Aldo Rossi’s 1979 “Teatro del Mundo,” a floating theater that sailed from Venice to Dubrovnik, hosting performances. It is the stuff of dreams that enters history and eventually becomes a myth.”
