This striking new maze in the grounds of Kielder Castle in Northumbrland evokes the dark, primeval spirit of the legendary Minotaur, doomed to roam forever in its stone labyrinth.

Ever since King Minos of Crete created a giant labyrinth beneath his palace at Knossos to confine the Minotaur, the monstrous chimeric progeny of his wife's liaison with a bull, mazes and labyrinths have exerted a powerful sway on human cultural imagination. Imbued with strong symbolic associations and the settings for countless myths and legends, a maze can be many things, from a whimsical garden ornament to something darker and more primeval, where monsters may lurk.

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In the grounds of Kielder Castle in Northumberland. London-based architect Nick Coombe and Scottish artist Shona Kitchen have designed Minotaur, a striking new contemporary maze that inventively reinterprets the traditional archetype, most notably in its construction. Made of locally quarried basalt stones contained in steel gabion cages, this is a robust, hard-edged creation, that recalls ancient Mediterranean stone labyrinths, the prison of the original Minotaur. More prosaically, unlike conventional hedge mazes, the gabion cages will require minimal maintenance and should last for 50 years. When wet, the basalt changes colour from silvery grey to gleaming black. Much of the time the maze will be seen in a partially wet state, so will be continually changing, like the sky.

Within the fiendishly contrived asymmetrical geometry of the labyrinth are a series of devices such as seating alcoves and a dead end staircase. At its heart is a crystalline chamber made of greenish cullet glass, sourced from factory waste from kilns in the glass-making industry. The area has a long history of glass casting, so there is an obvious poignancy in returning an industrial material in a new form to the landscape. Rural Northumberland communities are heavily dependent on tourism (Kielder lies within a World Heritage site), so it is hoped that this unusual new attraction will swell visitor numbers. The Kielder Partnership, which commissioned Minotaur as the result of a national competition in 2001, has an admirable record of site-specific arts patronage around Kielder Water and its Forest Park, including work by James Turrell and young architectural practice Softroom, who designed a mirror-clad belvedere. This latest project continues the partnership's imaginative and enlightened work. C. S.

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