Spend the night at a ship-shape hotel with a very public view

A one-room hotel in the shape of a ship is being built which will be hoisted into place on top of the Southbank Centre.

It has an en-suite double bedroom, kitchenette, library and viewing deck looking across the city from Big Ben to St Paul's Cathedral and will be open for the whole of next year.

Anyone will be able to book a stay and prices start at £120 a night with only one night a person permitted.

But Evening Standard readers with imagination can get the chance to stay for free.

Next month we will announce full details of a competition, called Ideas for London, whose winners will spend the night in the timber ship hotel called Roi des Belges,

The ship appears to have come to rest on the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

When each new guest enters the hotel, they will be expected to hoist its nautical flag to announce their residency and all will be encouraged to do interesting activities and record details of their stay in a logbook.

The project is the brainchild of innovative arts body Artangel, who commissioned the crystal house in Elephant and Castle, and Living Architecture, which was set up by writer Alain de Botton to give ordinary people the chance to stay in extraordinary buildings.

Work on the hotel began this month and the building will be lifted by crane into position in December ready for opening on 1 January.

The hotel has been designed by Turner Prize nominee Fiona Banner and young London architect David Kohn who beat around 500 architects and artists from around the world to take on the commission.

The brief was to create a room on one of the most visible sites in the capital, where up to two people at a time could spend a unique night in "an exemplary architectural landmark".

The winning idea was inspired by stories of travel in literature - and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, in particular, which begins on the Thames.

Ideas for London will form part of a programme of talks and events with "thinkers-in-residence" organised by Artangel in the hotel on certain days every month as part of the Olympics arts festival.

For details go to www.living-architecture.co.uk