Interview: Maze designer Adrian

Sion: Have you ever got lost in a mazeIrrgartenmaze? Well, there is a high likelihood that the maze you got lost in was designed by Adrian Fisher MBEMember of the Order of the British EmpireMBE. ­After all, he has designed over 700 mazes in 43 countries. Adrian spoke to Business Spotlight about the process of designing mazes and some of his most memorableunvergesslichmemorable projects. Listen carefully because we’ll test your understanding of the interview in the following track. Firstly, Adrian speaks about the connection between designing railway network maps and mazes.

Adrian: Well, there are some aspects of maze design which are the same as designing a network of any kind, whether it be a bus map, or a railway network. The map is meant to describe the way the network has been designed, but in a way that people pick sth. upetw. erfassenpick it up immediately and visually. And the diagram makes it very easy to understand. Then, there’s the psychology of making it in that case easier to follow. With a maze, of course, you’re trying to make it as difficult as possible to get from point A to point B, and so, you deploy sth.etw. anwendendeploy every psychological trick you can on topzusätzlichon top of the mathematical tricks. So, you have the mathematical and topological tricks, and then you have the psychological ­extra the icing on the cakedas i-Tüpfelchenicing on the cake. And I guess sth.etw. vermuten, glaubenguess that’s the sort of art of it, on top of which you’re trying to also convey sth.etw. vermittelnconvey a storyline.

Sion: Like any product, mazes have changed over the years. Adrian explains some of these key changes.

Adrian: And with many things, we discover the product evolvesich (weiter)entwickelnevolves. When you look at 19th-century hedgeHeckehedge mazes, they’re pretty well a piece of lawnRasenlawn, a rectangle of bushes, some paths. You go in an entrance, and you get to a goal. That’s it. I started discovering that a maze is more interesting if they had [non-standard] keynote featureGrundmerkmalkeynote features. And sometimes, the budget for the keynote features is more than that of the rest of the paths and bushes put together. And so, each individual keynote feature, or the set of them, help[s] define the character of the experience. Then, we did the mirror mazes, and that take offhier: schnell Erfolg habentook off and they had a complete life cycle, which is great. Then, in 1993, I did the world’s first cornfield (US)Maisfeldcornfield maze, in Pennsylvania — and it was an immediate success. It broke the Guinness World Record for the biggest maze in the world. We had all the coast-to-coast networks in America in attendancezugegenin attendance. It was just a phenomenal achievement. And after that, the next one — until we were building up to 40 or 50 a year, over 50 some years, all around the world: Australia, South Africa as well as across Europe.

Sion: Adrian told Business Spotlight about one of the most exciting locations he has designed mazes for. Those of you who have travelled to Singapore might have seen them! 

Adrian: Sometimes, the location is so exciting. I mean I built two mazes in the Jewel at ­Singapore airport, this great egg-shaped thing, where you’d expect to put a multi-storey car park (UK)Parkhausmulti-storey car park in an airport, Singapore put the Jewel. And it’s a million square feet of entertainment, diversionZerstreuungdiversion, retailEinzelhandelretail, shopping, a complete indoor garden on five levels inwards, and the largest indoor waterfall in the world coming through an open top. That’s the sort of attitudeHaltungattitude that makes Singapore airport the finest airport in the world. We built a hedge maze up in the top. It’s the only indoor hedge maze in the world. You have to water it to keep it moistfeuchtmoist. We built a mirror maze up there as well. It was an extra dimension on top of physical activities to do in an airport where you’re normally not getting any fresh exercise (non-stand.)Sport an der frischen Luftfresh exercise or movement at all. So, that was an experience to add to the catering and the offering of cuisineKulinarikcuisine and so on. So, that was very exciting. We worked with Moshe Safdie, who was an incredibleunglaublichincredible architect, who has done most of the keynote architecture in Singapore, you know, the swimming pool a thousand feet up on three skyscrapers and all that kind of thing. He was a wonderful man to work with.

Sion: Adrian spoke about the maze design he worked on for the 2023 thriller Saltburn.

Adrian: I designed it for real. You know, saying, “Here is a country propertyImmobilie; hier auch: Anwesenproperty. Here is the landscape. This is exactly where we want to put the maze.” In fact, the place where it is has just got some outside greenhouseGewächshausgreenhouses and glasshouses and bits and pieces. It’s just, you know, it’s the old walled garden. But anyway, I said, if this was a real requirement, this is exactly what I’d ­designed, exactly where I’d put it and so on. 

So, when they came to making a CGI image of it in 3D to insert sth. into sth.etw. in etw. einfügeninsert into the aerial photographyLuftaufnahmeaerial photography, it was a be a perfect fittadellos passenperfect fit. It read in the landscape like you’d expected it to for real. And, in fact, it was anatomically correct for the storyline. So, there had to be in the maze the shortest normal way to get through the maze and then the victimOpfervictim would take that route, and then the assailantAngreifer(in)assailant went in afterwards in the film but got to the middle sooner. And that was because, in the design, I had a secret extra short circuitRundgangcircuit in the hedge maze design, so that if you knew where you were going, you could go through the ­secret passage and get to the middle earlier and therefore confront your victim before they arrived.

Sion: Then, Adrian spoke about the methods he uses to document his work. These have also changed over the years.

Adrian: I’ve been flying drones now for nine years, but before then, we were always rely on sth.auf etw. angewiesen seinrelying on helicopters and Cessnas, and, you know, leaning out of windows and really hairy (ifml.)hier: brenzlig, riskanthairy stuff. But now, I always make sure that I’ve got superb aerial pictures. So, all the books I’ve written until 2006 didn’t really have the drone dimension to them. And so, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the drone dimension, and revisiting things I built 25 years ago that I never expected to see from the sky.