Paul Landon - grids

This exploration manifests itself as reflections on recurrent features in the experience of the city, reflections on the built landscape registered as a diagram, a map; the grid renders the city abstract yet measurable, quantifiable and submissive. The repetitive form evokes the judicial structuring of land ownership and regulation. The invisible boundaries and jurisdictions are rendered as a pattern of lines and forms. Different street layouts have different characteristics reflecting different terrains, histories and uses.

MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY, 2021 Ink jet print installed in two storefronts on Straße der Republik, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, August-September 2021, as part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM

The project MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY reflects on the planned German city of Eisenhüttenstadt as a model (and ideal) city that inserts into a narrative of unfinished and unbuilt model cities from Le Corbusier’s ‚Ville radieuse‘ (1930) to Fritz Haller’s ‚Totale Stadt‘ (1968) and Superstudio’s ,Continuous Monument: An Architectural Model for Total Urbanization‘ (1969). As part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM and borrowing from these unrealised aforementioned models, the socialist realist logic of the Eisenhüttenstadt plan is extrapolated as an infinite urban structure that extends beyond municipal limits, transcending the geographical and political barriers of waterways and borders, positing the city as a transnational expanding social structure. Reconfiguring the model of Eisenhüttenstadt of the 1950s as a circular structure, the layout will radiate from the historic town, repeating and mirroring its streets, squares and buildings.

Paul Landon has exhibited this plan as a drawing which oscillates between representation of an existing urban plan and an optical illusion. In this manner, the model city is reconsidered as a visual trick, the representation of a city superseding the lived experience of its inhabitants, the model city a monument to the future that never would be.

MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY, 2021 Ink jet print installed in two storefronts on Straße der Republik, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, August-September 2021, as part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM

MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY (detail), 2021 Ink jet print installed in two storefronts on Straße der Republik, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, August-September 2021, as part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM

MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY, 2021 Ink jet print installed in two storefronts on Straße der Republik, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, August-September 2021, as part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM

MODEL FOR A CONTINUOUS AND TOTAL CITY (detail), 2021 Ink jet print installed in two storefronts on Straße der Republik, Eisenhüttenstadt, Germany, August-September 2021, as part of the exhibition EISENHÜTTENSTADT - ZWISCHEN MODELL UND MUSEUM / BETWEEN MODEL AND MUSEUM

Intersections, ink jet drawing on adhesive polypropylene,1500 x 300 cm, Plein sud, Longueuil, QC, February 2020.

Intersections (detail), ink jet drawing on adhesive polypropylene,1500 x 300 cm, Plein sud, Longueuil, QC, February 2020.

Intersections (2020) is a wall drawing proposing a plan of a grid based urban agglomeration intersected by a network of expressways. Loosely based on the layout of Vieux-Longueuil, it was presented in the exhibition Gaps, Grids and Ghosts at Plein sud, Longueuil, Québec in 2020.

Intersections (detail), ink jet drawing on adhesive polypropylene,1500 x 300 cm, Plein sud, Longueuil, QC, February 2020.

Intersections, ink jet drawing on adhesive polypropylene,1500 x 300 cm, Plein sud, Longueuil, QC, February 2020.

INTERVIEW with Paul Landon conducted by Élisabeth Laliberté De Gagné, specialised educator at Plein sud in Longueuil, Québec. The exhibition "Gaps, grids and ghosts", which was unfortunately interrupted by the closure of Plein sud on March 13, 2020, due to the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) is discussed. The interview is in French.

Intersections, Oil on wall, 750 x 265 cm. Wall drawing installed in the CDEx, Université du Québec à Montréal, August 2018.

Intersections (2018)is a wall drawing proposing an urban plan based on a hexagon-based, four-corner grid, a plan that would allow for gaps in the structure of the city and wanderings in its inhabitants' movements.

Intersections (detail), Oil on wall, 750 x 265 cm. Wall drawing installed in the CDEx, Université du Québec à Montréal, August 2018.

Intersections (2017) working image, monochrome jpeg computer file.

Intersections (2017) responded to the urban space around the Viiskulma intersection in Helsinki. This landmark site, where five streets cross, demarcates the border between two historically opposing neighbourhoods; inner city development has resulted in a shifting of the economic specificities of the area where a once working class neighbourhood buttressed an affluent one. Intersections (2017) is a projected map that imagines a city based on five-corner intersections. Using the repeated form of an open hexagon, this layout allows for gaps in the urban plan, spaces and interruptions that encourage wandering and transgression of established boundaries.

Intersections (2017), Projected monochrome jpeg. Exhibited at Saariaho Järvenpäa, Helsinki, July 2017.