A Room for London

You are approaching a structure that appears to be a ship stranded high above the city skyline. This is A Room for London, an architectural installation that sat perched on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Its design intentionally mirrors the appearance of a boat that has run aground, seemingly left behind by the receding waters of the River Thames below. The vessel is named the Roi des Belges, after the actual riverboat that the author Joseph Conrad captained in the Congo in 1890. That journey served as the primary inspiration for his famous novella, Heart of Darkness, which famously begins with a scene set on the River Thames. The installation created a deliberate tension between a private, domestic space and the very public, high-altitude vantage point it occupied. During its time on the roof, it offered guests a panoramic view of the capital that stretched all the way from Big Ben in the west to Saint Pauls Cathedral in the east.