A Room for London

View from west

Diagram 1

A Room for London

We are proposing a room that grabs the corner of the

south bank centre.

Our idea was to create a body in the roof, acting like a

living organism finding different views of the city. In this

way its articulated body adapts to the building’s shape.

(diagram 1) We would like to make people wondering

what is that shape on the roof.

Dialog with the building

The room is expected to change location, but it will

always keep the memories of its first address. The

project was designed to play with the surrounding brutal-

ist architecture, as the National Theatre, a building that

is a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the

middle of London without anyone objecting. This premise

can be applied to the room, seems to be there without

any permission. The design is based on sharp angles

and its repetition, which could be clearly identified as the

brutal architecture tools. (diagram 2)

Position

We located the project on the edge of the building,

because we need to be as much as possible on north,

to see Big Ben (on the left, almost hidden by the Royal

Festival Hall), and Saint Paul’s Cathedral (on the right

side almost hidden by the National Theatre) and to be

seen by the people as a new landmark, so the closer we

install the structure to the out line of the roof more people

will see it. We want to find more points of view related to

the London’s landmarks at the same time to create a new

spot in the city’s landmark. (diagram 3)

This position also avoids a cantilever solution that would

be too complex and expensive to construct in this kind of

light material. The room is grabbing the North West cor-

ner, and from the Waterloo Bridge we will see the room

entrance. The deeper the guest is going in the quieter

the area around is. In this way the room is protected from

noise pollution, more than any wide expensive insulation

system.

Diagram 3

Diagram 2

1

Site plan 1/500

Plan 1/100

2A Room for London

b’

b

a

a’

Section aa’ 1/200 Section bb’ 1/200

3A Room for London

Back and Front

There is a permanent dialog between the build-

ing, the surroundings and the city. The dialog with

the surroundings is achieved by using the same

brutalist language. With the city we achieved this

dialog playing with the dichotomy of back and

front facades of the standard terraced houses

that we can fi nd in London. In these houses the

front with its cornice hides the pitched roofs (back

facade), two architectures systems which ignore

each other. This is expressed in the transversal

section.

The project is playing with this representation,

the section prevails to defi ne its identity (diagram

4), and the end terrace is a specifi c response

(entrance patio and chimney in the room).

Orientation

The project is assuming an orientation. The north

is the front, with the views on the Thames, the

room is dripping over the building, the south is

closed from view and we use chimneys to get light

in.

View from inside of the bed room

Diagram 4

Diagram 5

Diagram 6

4A Room for London

Sustainability

In order to do sustainable project we need to

think in the all life cycle of the building.

This project is really specific because it is tempo-

rary and can be moved for different locations, so

adaptation and easy assembly are two essential

things.

During the design process we thought in easy

ways of assemble and disassemble. (diagram 5)

The building it’s composed by two bodies that

follow the same section connected buy an articu-

lation that allow an easy adaption to different situ-

ations, so we use all the time the same skeleton.

The bodies are made of a simple steal structure

where we attach the different chimneys that go up

and down. The ones that go up capture the sun

and make it slide in side providing light and heat,

the ones that go down focus on the different views

that you can have from the top of Queen Elizabeth

Hall but just two of them make part of the inside

space and needed to be insulated. (diagram 6)

This simple structure and this two articulated bod-

ies gave us the inside configuration. We placed

the entire fixed program in the two static bodies

(bed room, toilets and living room) to allowed the

rest of the space to be flexible for the two patios.

In terms of construction materials we want to use

pre-fabricated and standardized materials which

can be easily assembled and recycled. With this

kind of materials we want to avoid waste as much

as we can and other pollutants that normally we

produced in the construction site.

View from Queen Elizabeth Hall