In yesterday's post we looked at an architectural project seen during the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice suggesting the grid as a solution hinting at inclusion and integration. Let's remain in Venice to explore another type of grid, a sort of chaotic and mesmerising one via the garden-maze dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges located in the rear of the Palladian Cloister and the Cypress Cloister in the former monastery on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore.
Opened in 2011 to mark the e twenty-fifth anniversary of Borges' death, the maze is based on a plan designed by British architect Randoll Coate in the 1980s and originally donated to the Borges Foundation.
"A maze is a house built purposely to confuse men; its architecture, prodigal in symmetries, is made to serve that purpose," Jorge Luis Borges wrote, and this particular labyrinth does confuse a bit, even though, when you look at it from the bell tower of San Giorgio, things become a bit clearer. The view allows you indeed to read Borges' name formed in two opposite directions and the maze also incorporates symbols the writer held dear - a stick, an hourglass, a tiger, and a question mark.
Borges was fascinated by labyrinths and in his short story "The Garden of Forking Paths" there is a character - Ts'ui Pên - who wants to acocmplish two tasks in his life - write a vast and intricate novel and build an equally vast and intricate labyrinth, "in which all men would lose their way". Yet Borges' maze on San Giorgio is not about getting lost, but it is a contemplative space that allows those who wander around its sinuous paths to ponder about life, regain their interior peace and eventually find themselves.
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