Today I want to make you aware of a maze from the past. Not thousands of years ago like some labyrinths, or hundreds of years like many hedge and stone mazes. No this is a maze from the relatively close past of 2012. When you speak about mazes and labyrinths a decade really isn’t that long ago.
So this giant book maze, called aMAZEme was a temporary pop-up art installation in London at the Royal Festival Hall during the Southbank Centre’s Festival of the World. The walls of the maze were made from 250K stacked books placed by volunteers. My small hometown library which I visited each week as a kid has 98K books, so 250K books is a nice size library’s worth. For reference, the 100th largest library in the US (by volumes owned) is the Houston, Texas public library with just over 3M volumes for the local population of 2.3M people.
I learned about this project as I do most things, browsing around the web learning about mazes when I found this article. While the maze was not difficult - it was made in the shape of a fingerprint, it is a maze that would be difficult to get through for many of us. I would stop and look for something to read ! From the pictures I have found, and you can see some below, it is a bunch of people browsing the books !
I searched for a picture so you can see how cool this looks, and I couldn’t pick just one photo because each was so good. Check out this search result for “maze made of books”. A few repeats, but overall a wonderful maze !
See website on image for attribution
I like how the maze walls are very thick - 3 books thick. But the bibliophile in me would want to search the inner books - what if there’s a gem in there that can’t be seen ? It also makes me think…I have seen maze walls made of hay, hedges, glass, wood panels and water among other things (check out my post on 44 Different Types of Mazes and Labyrinths). What is the weirdest maze making material you have ever seen ?