How to Invent Utopia

How to Invent Utopia is a project by Paul Landon exhibited at the Escuela Adolfo Prieto in Monterrey, Mexico in 2024. A large industrial city in the north of Mexico, geometrical modernism permeates the public spaces of Monterrey in its university campuses, hospitals, and public facilities. The historic centre of the city is dominated by a collection of public buildings that were developed as part of a monumental reconstruction of the city’s commercial and administrative centre, the Macroplaza, in the late 20th century. The buildings surrounding the Macroplaza are iconic examples of geometric modernism. Simple, yet complex forms evoke possibilities in construction and material that aspire to unfulfilled spatiotemporal potential. Seen from a distance, or walking towards them, they dilate, becoming unfamiliar yet recognisable forms recalling the promise of another time and another place.

How to Invent Utopia, Paul Landon, 2024, exhibition view at Escuela Adolfo Prieto, Monterrey, Mexico, February-March 2024.

This project speculated on returning architectural objects to the stages of their conception, to drawings, plans, models, and 3D renditions. Buildings would lose their materiality and functionality and became form and mental process. Pure form is utopian in its metaphysical state. Plato used the concept of utopia as a model for discourse around city building to invent a better society.

How to Invent Utopia, Paul Landon, 2024, exhibition view at Escuela Adolfo Prieto, Monterrey, Mexico, February-March 2024.

Geometry occupies perfect space, rendering the potentiality of space. With geometry, utopia goes beyond discourse and is returned to its fundaments, to Plato’s immutable forms. Geometry situates us phenomenologically, letting us know where we are to experience (and share the experience of) our environment. By translating the coordinates of our surroundings into simplified and purified geometric forms, into cubes, columns, spheres, planes, it renders space virtual, beyond the everyday, and into the metaphysical.

Construcción, Paul Landon, 2024, cardboard, 20 x 41 x 56cm.

Forma, Paul Landon, 2024, acrylic paint on wall, 320x240 cm.

Líneas, Paul Landon, 2024, acrylic paint on wall, 590 x 370 cm.

Proyección, Paul Landon, 2024, HD colour video projection, silent, 1:15 min, looped.

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