Imaginary City Lives in Drawings of Autistic Frenchman
A 34-year old Frenchman named Gilles Trehin has created a city in his mind, and built out drawings, histories, geographies and cultures of his city, called Urville.
In addition to more than 200 detailed drawings of cityscapes, buildings, parks and industrial zones, the documentation of Urville extends to an historical overview of Urville, from Antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up through 1945 and modern times.
The city's geography is documented with elevations, climate details, and map coordinates. The culture is detailed to include religious, vocational, population, and commercial figures.
The extent of the textual documentation is as broad as the detail of the more than 200 drawings, which when taken as a whole, provide an extremely comprehensive plan overview of any city, real or imagined.
The extraordinary creator of Urville, Monsieur Trehin has been characterized as having Autism or Asperger's Syndrome. The story of the genesis of Urville began when he visited New York as a child, and later built Lego cities to emulate the enormous skyscrapers he had seen there.
Over a period of years the city grew in his mind, until he drew an expansive overview map of Urville. The General Overview no doubt served as his guide to draw more and more detailed scenes of the city, from quaint, historic town plazas to modern glass office buildings.
There is also now an English language book of Urville
Today, Trehin also lectures about his city, as well as discusses the contributions to society made by people with Autism or Asperger's Syndrome. Urville images and history.
