LOOK UP LONDON! is a work in progress, a series of postcards depicting London viewed by rooftop. The first postcard assembles a roofscape of Shoreditch, the neighbourhood where we live and work. We reinterpreted the geography of the area by combining monuments past, present and future. The text reads:
Shoreditch, London.
Old Street changes every day. Some current haircuts look medieval. The ancient parish church, rebuilt between 1736 and 1740,
now stands adjacent to a popular gay pub. Shakespeare frequented these parts, along with "the dissolute, loose and insolent."*
Romeo and Juliet was performed on Curtain Road. Music halls have been replaced by striptease venues. After WWII, manufacturing
developments forced out small industries. Now there are art galleries and clothing shops. The cinema on Pitfield Street is being
rebuilt, and the new Shoreditch High Street Station is scheduled to open in 2010.
*Middlesex Justices, 1596.
You may notice the original Hoxton Cinema, new buildings currently planned or under construction, a glimpse of the new station, one of the omnipresent CCTV cameras and the walls of the White Cube mirroring the trees and sky over Hoxton Square. The idea of the LOOK UP LONDON! series is to think differently about the culture and architecture of London. Perhaps these postcards are less likely to be sent by visitors than by Londoners indulging a sense of tourism at home.