Don Justo is an aging man who, since 1961 has placed almost all of his energy into the construction of a cathedral. Of course, cathedrals are usually labored over for some length of time, many never to be completed before the death of their architect. La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona is a good example of this, it’s construction spanning at least one century and totally eclipsing the life of it’s creator, Gaudi, with no current completion date in sight. But what differs the cathedral that Don Justo is building from all the rest is that Don Justo is actually building it. By hand (almost).

Don Justo’s Cathedral. Photo by Hasslehoff.

The cathedral, which is dedicated to Nuestra Senora del Pilar, Madre de Jesus, is over 8000 meters squared, with spaces planned for cloisters, a library; and a 40 meter high, 12 meter in diameter dome based on St. Peter’s basilica in Rome is already taking shape. It’s plot is a small farm that he inherited from his parents in the town of Mejorada del Campo, about 20km outside of Madrid, some of which he sold in order to finance the construction of the cathedral itself. And although most of the work has been done by Don Justo himself, he has at times employed the help of volunteers and a private construction firm. However, almost everything has been paid from his own pocket.

In his younger days, Don Justo spent eight years as a Trappist monk, but was asked to leave before he was able to take his vows due to tuberculosis. He has no blessing from the Catholic church, no permission from the planning board of Mejorada del Campo, and to date no significant blueprints for the project. It is a continual “act of faith,” the design of which takes the shape of whatever moves him. It may take another 15-20 years before the final brick is set in stone, but in all actuality construction may end the day he dies.

While Don Justo has set every brick in his cathedral, what might be even more incredible is that one young French man by the name of Gilles Trehin has set every brick to every building in one of the world’s largest cities. That city is named Urville, population some 1.8 million (2004), some short distance from Nice, and exists entirely in Trehin’s mind.

Trehin has been drawing since the age of 5, at 8 he was diagnosed with autism, and since he was 12 (1984) he has been planning the city of Urville down to the ‘t.’ His website, the official site of Urville, is host to thousands of facts, historical and cultural briefs, economic profiles and even tourist information. Hundreds of sketches are available around the net, so incredibly detailed that it’s hard to believe Urville doesn’t exist. His only plans for the city are indefinite growth, and a ‘guidebook’ has been published for anyone who plans on visiting the fabled city.

Trehin and a map of Urville

Now while it may be obvious that Don Justo and Gilles Trehin are not your average people, both given the gift of extreme imagination, there is a bit more that can relate the two. You see, neither Justo of Trehin have any forseeable end to their muse. Justo knows that when he dies it is very possible for his cathedral to be razed to the ground, and while Trehin has left us an incredibly detailed history and city plan, the fantasticity (like that word?) of Urville will also die with him. Neither Justo or Trehin can possibly pass on the complexity of their vision, no matter how detailed or drawn out, because they know no end. At any point in time we can mark the specific shape either their ideas may take, but the second we look up, away from their work, we’re a thousand steps behind.

So what can their seemingly incessant need to create teach us? For one, the beauties of the infinite dream. Everyone has goals, some long, some short, tasks we can accomplish in a few minutes or a few years. But many goals coincide with our own inabilities to peer into the future, however many days, months or years away we can possible fathom. Now I’m not saying those particular goals, with definative endings, aren’t good, in fact they’re essential. They keep us going, keep us motivated. But when those goals end, it’s hard to create new goals; to have come so far only to have to start at zero and work towards an end again. That’s where Justo and Trehin’s way of thinking comes into play. There is no end for them, and while the journey is a bit daunting, and maybe even a bit scary, at the end of the day they’re working and living for something, and that is the beauty of the infinite dream.

For more on Urville and Trehin, you might try this video documentary, this Wisconsin Medical Society profile page, or you can order his guidebook from Amazon, and of course the aforementioned Urville Official Site.

For more on Don Justo, a brief can be found here, with some incredible pictures here.

To give you an idea of what was going on in 1933: we had just begun construction on the Golden Gate Bridge, Hitler was just appointed Chancellor of Germany, King Kong premiered at the Radio City Music Hall in NYC, the chocolate chip cookie was invented, and one of the most popular cars at the time was the Ford Model B.

the Dymaxion Car

Now what if I told you that in 1933 a man by the name of Buckminster Fuller (who also invented the geodesic dome and the radar dish) created a car with a top speed of 120 m.p.h., got 30 m.p.g., had seating for eleven people, and had a turning diameter of 21 feet? He named it the Dymaxion, it had three wheels and steered from the single rear-wheel, like forklifts do today. WNET has a great video of it in action.

Unfortunately the Dymaxion car was never put into production, the technology behind the car, other than it’s aerodynamic design, has largely been forgotten by all but design students. However it should be pointed out that the original VW bus used the Dymaxion streamline shape and is probably the closest production car to the original Dymaxion. High speed, high volume, fuel efficienct — Buckminster Fuller, where have you gone?

For more on the Dymaxion car, check out this very impressive car chronology.

On a similar vein, and stay with me here because I’m changing gears quickly, have you ever looked at the the letter ‘K,’ how it’s jagged and pointy, and thought, well of all the shapes that could possibly represent the ‘K’ sound, they did a pretty good job of designing one that looks like it should sound? Try ‘S’ or ‘U’ on, and you’ll start to see just how well designed the alphabet is, it’s darn right logical.

Of course, it wouldn’t be that hard for anyone to come up with their own examples of music relating to shapes and colors, and it wouldn’t be hard to see the logic of making the ‘K’ look like it sounds. But what if you had no choice, or what if the relating of two different senses, of hearing and seeing for example, happened with every letter, word, paragraph you looked at? For some people, ‘K’ not only has a distinct look and sound, but maybe even a color or a taste.

It’s called Synesthesia, and roughly 1 in 23 people have it. It occurs in healthy brains and can affect people who have no other mental abnormalities. Somewhere along the way, brains affected by synesthesia were wired to have more than one sense react to the same stimulus. For instance, I might see a cat and hear a piano, or vice versa, even when only one of the stimuli are present.

Granted, such examples are extreme. Normally, those with synesthesia have one of the few basic types, colors being assigned to music or letters and numbers. But it goes a step farther than normal association. I associate some sounds with reds and oranges, and thusly classify them as warm sounds. Synesthetes, on the other hand, will actually see blue when they hear the blues.

Duke Ellington did just that … well, almost. Ellington had a particular type of synesthesia, one where each musical instrument has it’s own color, because his synesthesia was a timbre-color connecting form. Timbre, briefly, is the part of sound that allows us to tell the difference between, oh, say a B flat from a guitar and a B flat from a cello.

“I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it’s one color. I hear the same note played by someone else and it’s a different color. When I hear sustained musical tones, I see just about the same colors that you do, but I see them in textures. If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin.” +

I’ve always guessed that those with synesthesia, (I am not one of them, by the way), have probably benefited from an immense sense of creativity. With the world being painted a different set of colors every way you look, I would think the additional sensory experiance would be an ideal starting point for many artists. And like the deaf or mute, I would think that the senses effected by synesthesia would be strengthened and relied on more heavily.

But what, you might say, what if a person had synesthesia, but was also left without the use of one or more senses, either by birth or another event? Spotlight: Stevie Wonder. Wonder, who is blind, also has sound-color synesthesia, and though he can not see the instruments he’s playing, in his minds eye he probably holds the ability to see the music he is composing more clearly than those who posess the ability to see.

And that in short is how music, to some, is color. For more info on synesthesia, try looking at the American Synesthesia Association’s website, this very wordy science document, or the Mixed Signals online interactive synesthesia. Also, there’s a well maintained list of article links at the Blue Cats and Chartreuse Kittens website, the companion to the book of the same name, which is available from Amazon.