This way to Urville
To get to Urville, just click here.
Urville is a city envisioned and drawn out by Gilles Trehin, who has autism. Diagnosed as a child, Trehin became obsessed with buildings after his family moved from France to the US. He first built Lego skyscrapers (see these here) then realized that a “‘city cannot only be a city of skyscrapers. It needs houses, a historic quarter, a population,’” as he says in the January 13th The Austrialian. The article is appropriately entitled Metropolis of the Mind: Trehin then drew street plans and then maps of the city in his mind, “amazing systematic detail.”
But the city’s “system” extends beyond the page. Gilles has invented and documented not only a complete year-by-year history of the city stretching back centuries, and slotted it into histories of France and Europe, but also enough minutiae about population changes and densities for every neighbourhood to satisfy the most hardcore nerd.
Indeed: Urville can be visited on the web by going here to learn about the geography of Urville, here to read about its history, here to read about its society and culture. Trehin has written a book about Urville and also lectures about it: “My greatest pleasure is to be invited to give a lecture on Urville because I can make it exist,” he says on his website.
The aim of the Urville book, says Gilles, is to educate the public about autism. “It’s a very complex condition. After 30 years of having it I still don’t understand it,” he says.
Through his book, lectures and exhibitions, he wants to show the positive side of a condition commonly portrayed, especially in France, as negative. “Most autistic people have some hidden talent somewhere,” says his father, Paul. “The hard thing,” adds Gilles, “is finding out what it is.”
The article Metropolis of the Mind specifically discusses Trehin in the context of autistic savants like Stephen Wiltshire, who draws “faithful copies of what he sees or remembers.” Many parents whose children do not have obvious, seemingly miraculous, abilities to draw or play music or perform computations object to the notion of the “autistic savant.” But I do think it is well to note that autistic children have “some hidden talent”: While some might say that that of my son Charlie is bike-riding or swimming, I would say first that his one talent is that he’s a great kid with a great personality—-that he’s just a great person to spend time with, and to know, and thanks to him I’ve traveled to more places than I ever knew existed or could have imagined.
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POSTED IN: Adulthood, Art, Autism Lit, Books
2 opinions for This way to Urville
mcewen
Jan 13, 2007 at 1:33 pm
So why is it that the ‘positive’ get so little press coverage, but the tiniest little negative is blasted all over the world?
Thanks Kristina
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jan 13, 2007 at 3:16 pm
We’ll have to keep stressing the positive and the “posautive”—-and being careful about the “negautive.”
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