Adrian Fisher (maze designer)

Adrian Fisher MBE is a British pioneer, inventor, designer and creator of mazes, puzzles, public art, tessellations, tilings, patterns and networks of many kinds. He is responsible for more than 700 mazes in 42 countries since 1979.

Before embarking on his career, Fisher was educated at Oundle School and Portsmouth Polytechnic.[1]

Fisher has created 63 mirror mazes, and pioneered the extensive use of thematic chambers within mirror mazes, to achieve Mirror Maze Adventures. He has created 44 hedge mazes, and pioneered the use of Folly Towers, Tunnels, Walk-through Parting Waterfalls and Foaming Fountain Gates in mazes. He designed the world's first cornfield maize maze in 1993 and over 400 since, and has set 7 Guinness World Records. He has created water mazes, most notably the award-winning Beatles Maze (with Randoll Coate and Graham Burgess), and the Jersey Water Maze. He pioneered the genre of Path-in-Grass Mazes, and has created over a dozen around the world.

Fisher has invented several brick paving and mosaic tiling systems. For the Orang Utan Pavement Maze at Edinburgh Zoo, he invented a new paver tessellation using 7-sided and 5-sided (regular pentagon) bricks. The 'Fisher Paver', his second paving system uses 7-sided and 4-sided bricks and has been installed within paving projects on both sides of the Atlantic. Its benefits include being able to achieve dynamic and intriguing designs straight off the pallet with no cutting, thus offering excellent labour productivity when laying; it only requires one new 7-sided paver shape, yet its modular scale matches all industry-standard paving systems. Fisher's third paving system is the Mitre System, which he invented and patented together with the American mathematician Ed Pegg. Used for both mosaics and paving, their distinctive angular shapes create unique and pleasing images. Notable examples of its use in England include four Historic Mosaics with the Millennium Maze in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, and the 24 ft high SciTec Mosaic at Oundle School, Northamptonshire; and in America, the Tree of Life Mosaic in a private garden in Roxbury, Connecticut.

His Colour Mazes have been published in Scientific American, and walk-on examples can be found in the New York Hall of Science, Eureka Children's Museum in Halifax England, The Exploratory in Bristol, Cape Coral Children's Science Center in Florida, and over 30 other locations worldwide.

He designed the Star Map concept for London Buses, upon which was based the Spider Map system currently in use by London Buses.

In the 1980s, he co-designed the Blenheim Palace maze, that appears in the 2016 Bank of England £5 note.[1]

Fisher designs puzzles for British newspapers and the World Puzzle Championships. The Guardian newspaper named him as one of Britain's top 50 designers.[2] He has written over a dozen books on mazes and puzzles, in particular The Art of the Maze (Orion Books, 1990), Secrets of the Maze (Thames & Hudson) and The Amazing Book of Mazes (Thames & Hudson, 2006).

A major Maze Art Exhibition on Adrian Fisher's work was held at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, from January to March 1997; it included the creation of full-size permanent mazes in the surrounding landscape, and the publication "Your Land is His Canvas".

Fisher was Director of Britain's "1991 – The Year of the Maze" Tourism Campaign. He was the recipient of the 2003 Resorgimento Award at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA, on May 24, 2003, "in recognition of those who have demonstrated outstanding creativity, who have and will continue to change the world in which we live". He gave a TEDx talk in Cape May, New Jersey, USA, on the subject of "The Pursuit of Happiness". He was a judge of the 2009 International Labyrinth Competition in St Petersburg, Russia.

He and his wife Marie live in the village of Durweston in North Dorset, and within their grounds have a yew hedge maze with a central Folly Tower, mirrored chamber, spiral staircase and battlement walkway.

Fisher was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 Birthday Honours for services to international trade and the creative industry.[3]