A Room for London - in pictures

A Room for London, designed by the architect David Kohn and the artist Fiona Banner, contains a single hotel room that visitors can book
Photograph: Katherine Rose

Perched high on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth hall, it looks, says Rowan Moore, 'as if stranded there by a receding deluge' Photograph: Katherine Rose

'It juts perkily into the void, and three little wind turbines, like displaced propellers, whirr on the top of a triangular rig' Photograph: Charles Hosea/Courtesy of Living Architecture

As well as paying guests, writers, artists and musicians have been invited to stay there, and be creative
Photograph: Katherine Rose

The view from the interior: 'You progress from a little vestibule to a galley, to a bedroom that opens up to penthouse views of the river, bracketed by the Palace of Westminster to the left, and St Paul’s Cathedral to the right' Photograph: Charles Hosea/Courtesy of Living Architecture

All aboard: the boat is named after author Joseph Conrad’s Congo river vessel in Heart of Darkness, the Roi des Belges Photograph: Katherine Rose

'The timber-lined interior, stained in places in rich pinkish-red, is not pushed to the point where it is literally boat-like in every detail' Photograph: Charles Hosea/Courtesy of Living Architecture

The structure was exactingly well made by the specialist company Millimetre. 'It is solid; it has a kind of earnestness,' says architect David Kohn Photograph: Charles Hosea/Courtesy of Living Architecture

Inside there is a cabinet containing old maps of the Thames and the Congo, in reference to the parallels that Conrad made between the two rivers Photograph: Katherine Rose

'The spire-like superstructure of A Room for London refers to Nicholas Hawksmoor's churches, and to the spires of London in general' Photograph: Katherine Rose

The lucky purchasers of nights in the hotel room will be able to contemplate the 'venerable stream' much as Conrad’s characters did in the cruising yawl Nellie Photograph: Charles Hosea/Courtesy of Living Architecture