Holla all!

If you don’t already know, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones… we’ve got everyone else already lending a hand.

But we wouldn’t want to keep you in the dark… oh no. Not when it’s just a matter of days now til Jordan and Niall decamp temporarily from the Hospital Club and set up office with aberrant architecture under the full glare of Oxford Street. Ah yes!

The story is this: we’re Architecture Residents here at the Hospital, aberrant are Architecture Residents over at the V&A. Now we’re teaming together to stage a joint two-week ‘pop-up residency’ in Selfridges’ famous Wonder Room Windows.

From 9.30am on 16th June we’ll be transforming our temporary home there from a blank retail canvas to a sprawling cityscape installation. Day by day and brick by brick, the growth of the city will be visible to the masses coming and going outside.

Fellow Creatives in Residence Alex Shepherd (Visual Arts 2010), Simon Burrill (Film 2009) and Destiny Ekaragha (Film 2010) have joined the project too. Alex and Simon will be showing new work alongside and amidst our Selfridges city, while Destiny is going rogue to shoot ‘behind the scenes’. Now all we need is… you.

This city will be built from things you tell us about your own personal London – diverse, perverse, love it or loathe it, private or otherwise – anything goes. Please click here and take a minute to send us a picture, a word or an idea that tells us something about what London means to you. Then the HOJO/aberrant residency tagteam will magic it into our alternative model city.

Thank you in advance for your contributions!

Oh and drop by anytime from 16th June to stare and point at us, live at work in the window. We look forward to seeing you. x

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Please note: all visual material you send us must be your own original work. If a recognisable person is included in any video or photograph you send us, you must ensure that you have the signed consent of that person for that material to be exhibited in public. In the event of a complaint you will be required to produce a copy of that signed consent.

A-ha……….. finally a chance to lift our heads just long enough to blog. Sorry for the silence – we could blame it on the sunshine, blame it on the boogie, but really it’s because the ‘Welcome to your City’ project has kicked off in a big way.

Long story short, we’re teaming up with aberrant architecture to stage a dual pop-up residency event-cum-installation in Selfridges Wonder Windows on Oxford Street. Simon Burrill and Alex Shepheard, fellow CiRs past and present, are contributing to the project and will be exhibiting new work during the event. Super to have them involved. There’s blurb over at CiR HQ – go and contribute! Or come and visit us live on site from the 15th of June.

In the meantime, here’s some work we did with our Selfridges co-conspirators aberrant architecture and Melissa Appleton last year.  A ‘fiction based on fact’, aberrant presented a pavilion at the SZHK Biennale 2009 to showcase the ideas of ‘Gordon Wu’*, Hong Kong’s foremost captain of industry and infrastructural visionary… More about that here. And more from us soon about Project Selfridges. x

* any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

We have been welcomed into some new temporary studio space in Old Street thanks to Lee McCormack our mentor on the Creatives in Residence scheme. Thanks Lee!!

You should check out Lee’s way kool Ovei design ~ it’s the stuff of the future I’m telling ya.

A quick update of what we’ve been up to recently – from Russia to the French Riviera via a Shoreditch basement, lots of good things underway.

Fidelio at Perm 36:

Jordan has been working with SCDLP Architects on the set design of a new production of Beethoven’s one and only opera, Fidelio, being performed in July this year by Perm State Opera and Ballet Theatre of Russia. To be staged in the grounds of Perm 36, an operational gulag until 1988, the project is part set design, part site-specific installation – a series of stages and architectural events spread through the gulag’s grounds. A couple of pics:

La Belle Époque:

A certain Riviera palace is ear-marked for the Starchitect treatment. To set the scene, design consultant Jane Withers commissioned House of Jonn and Thomas Greenall to produce a context study of its aesthetic, cultural and historical significance. Fingers crossed for a proper site visit..

Club That Shall Remain Nameless:

Can’t reveal any details yet sadly but excited to also be doing a little work on a new club opening in Shoreditch this summer. Nothing but a derelict ex-industrial shell at the moment but come July or August home to 900 creatures of the night…

So — all a bit hectic just now but great to be busy. Please just give us a shout if anything takes your interest.

xoxo

Really pleased to be paired with Claudie Plen and Andrea Ingrisch, two of the amazing pool of professional coaches who bring their perspective to the CiR programme. Also very excited to have been introduced to curator Kati Howe, with who we look forward to developing new work over the course of the year. One potential project for the Club already under discussion – more about that soon hopefully…

Launch night was a real pleasure. We showed work old and new and took a lot from conversations with the very inquisitive Hospital members and guests – much of it complimentary, some of it critical, but all of it appreciated. Particularly good to meet Samir Ceric and Zoe Knight, directors of design store Wolf and Badger, who were interested in the ‘future gothic arch’ piece on show, the result of some intense digital 3D modelling and an advanced rapid prototyping machine.

At the other end of the tech-spectrum was ‘Questions of Development’, our exhibit resembling a pile of giant architectural cardboard lollipops.

This was a sample of an ongoing work of ‘performance architecture’. As it said on the wall:

‘These objects are props in a series of direct action performances by House of Jonn. Each is a fragment of London’s built environment, buildings abandoned or under discussion, others not yet constructed or approved for development. Taken to their real locations in the city, these rough replicas are intended to draw attention to issues surrounding the building’s development – a modest and absurd protest at the obscure systems that control our built environment. Each is an open question about what we want from our city and how we can involve ourselves in its making.’

With thanks to Anna Robertson for her photography on the night.

House of Jonn was a slightly risky choice for the next wave of CIRs. In our category the competition from some fantastic graphic designers was incredibly strong. House of Jonn team, Jordan Hodgson and Niall Gallacher however won all the Judges over with their fantastic visual skills and their inspiring ideas to change the way we think about the Hospital building.
Catherine McDermott, Director of Curating Contemporary Design

Hello! We’re House of Jonn and we work with architecture and the built environment. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re the first architecture residents at the Hospital Club that makes us the ‘risky’ pick, but it seems it’s also part of what landed us the gig. Hopefully the judges saw the potential for us to bring something different to the Club – and that’s exactly what we plan to do. Look out for additions, interventions, installations and adaptations to the spaces here at 24 Endell Street.