LoftCube on rooftop

The spot chosen for the prototype. a former cold-storage depot overlooking the Spree River and now used as record company offices, is typical of many industrial sites – large expanses of flat roof going to waste. Aisslinger envisions the concept as functioning like an upscale hotel, a temporary home from home where like-minded people can spend short periods of time ‘congregating in rooftop communities – floating on top of the city. yet being where the action is’. A LoftCube would cost around ?55,000, but the price of a suitable site could be far higher.

The master bedroom, with its combination of transparent and translucent wall panels

Drawing on earlier housing concepts such as Pierre Botschi’s 1973 moulded GRP ‘mobile house’. The LoftCube has a lightweight construction to maximise the number of sites for which it is suited. A structure of Bankirai wood is infilled with honeycomb panels, coated with a white laminate and specially developed plastic sheets; inside extensive use has been made of Conan to create a series of movable, transformable function panels. This means that the bath and kitchen share a tap, which can be swung between the two zones. The same goes for the shower and plant basin that separate the bathing and living areas. In this way, Aisslinger ensures that the LoftCube’s living spaces appear much larger than they are, in keeping with the penthouse’s traditional emphasis on space. Wall panels are constructed from translucent acrylic glass.

Interior view of the kitchen and bathroom showing the transformable function panels that divide the living spaces

The association of the high life with high achievement is clear, if slightly tongue in cheek, yet the concept makes a more serious point about ‘flying buildings’, temporary architecture and transportability. The LoftCube, it is mooted, could be transported to its perch by freight helicopter (bringing to mind the iconic image of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome suspended beneath a Sikorsky S-55) or via a crane. The idea of a private rooftop society is also paradoxical, suggesting people who seek to remove themselves from the real world at street level, a development of the science fiction device of the socially layered city where height and security are inextricably linked.