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Get Lost!
By Arno de Villiers Architect and Contractor CBC1255481 Ph 239-‐571-‐7585
A special kind of excitement exists for children in a maze. The intense fear of not finding your way out eventually gives way to the joy and sense of achievement when the exit is found and you are back in the safety of a known world. Mazes have fascinated designers since Cretans and Egyptians invented the first labyrinths a few thousand years ago. The garden maze emerged in Britain and France during the Renaissance and now modern maze-‐makers are creating puzzle paths out of mirrors and other hard materials as well as cutting them into cornfields and hedges. Below left is the labyrinth of the Villa Pisani in Italy, created in 1720. It is reportedly the most difficult garden maze in the world to solve. Even Napoleon was floored by the challenge!
Hampton Court Maze pictured above right, was commissioned around 1700 and is the oldest surviving hedge maze in the United Kingdom. It was the first designed to puzzle Londoners with a host of unexpected turns and dead ends. In the recent movie, “Maze Runner”, a boy named Thomas is placed in a community of boys after his memory is erased. He
soon learns they are all trapped in a maze that will require him to join forces with fellow "runners" for a shot at escape. Amazing graphics add to the drama.
Solving a puzzle has enthralled people of all ages, be they kids in a restaurant finding their way through a paper maze with a purple crayon line, or a crossword puzzle for adults. It generates a sense of curiosity and adventure; the very stuff that drove Columbus across dangerous waters to discover a new world and each of us to find a path for our own lives. Our built environment used to provide us with a similar sense of excitement of getting lost, not in a grid of boring blocks of rectangular streets as all our towns and cities now do, but in a world of endless variety of wonderful sights and experiences.
Lucignano in Italy as do so many European towns and villages, provides the traveler with that wonderful experience of getting lost happily. Strolling around, you are never quite sure of where you are, but you don’t
care. You are continually enticed to step into a side alley, or into a little jewelry shop, or a small coffee bar, a beautiful church, museum or restaurant. What fun and what entertainment!
Here is my clarion call:
America, wake up! Lets get back to building fascinating mixed-‐ use villages full of variety and entertainment with American technology. Let us banish forever the boring gridiron street patterns and mindless rows of identical structures. Life is for the living and our towns need to reflect that. Let us set aside our obsession with cars and find our feet again. But first, lets build villages that are worth strolling around in. Let me show you how!
My nine-‐year old son Arno, points the way to go on a map of the old city in Marbella, Spain, an amazing place to get lost in!
