Perch here for $50K
DENVER — For a limited time, a Denver hotel is offering a package with a one-night stay in a pop-up, inflatable room that rises nearly seven metres in the air, thanks to a scissor lift on top of the van on which it sits. The cost: $50,000. There is a weight limit. No smoking is allowed.
Architect Alex Schweder created the 1.5-metre-by-two-metre, seethrough room atop a van for the Biennial of the Americas festival of arts, culture and ideas in Denver. It has a chemical toilet, shower, sink, inflatable bed and couch, and curtains. It is being driven to parking lots around town through Aug. 23.
“It’s a very small room but a very special room,” Schweder said. “You’re always on the top floor.”
Now The Curtis Hotel, which sponsored the piece, is offering the curious a chance to stay in the aluminum and inflated vinyl structure called “the hotel rehearsal.”
Much of Schweder’s work centres on the performance of architecture, focusing not so much on a structure but the actions within it. After Schweder learned developers want to turn several Denver parking lots into hotels, he created “the hotel rehearsal” as a foreshadowing of how the space could change.
One early draft involved suspending the room from a crane. Schweder was encouraged to keep it more grounded.
For $50,000, a guest would get one weekend night in the puffy space, plus lots of extras, including a diamond pendant and earrings, two iPod Nanos and a dance party for 100 people in a ballroom at The Curtis. The inflatable room holds 200 kilograms. No alcohol is allowed inside, in hopes of discouraging people from using it as a bouncy castle.
Schweder said much of the $50,000 will go toward insurance, but customers also will be supporting the future of the Biennial of the Americas.