Sapiens

Turning to one of the oldest myths in our history, to the ancient Greek source, we find the first figure of an architect in our civilization : Daedalus, trapped in the labyrinth he himself built in Crete to imprison the Minotaur. Unable to escape by sea or by land, Daedalus devised a way to flee through the air : feathers fastened to his arms with wax. We generally remember only Daedalus’s first instruction — not to fly too close to the sun, lest the wings burn — but we forget the second, equally important one : not to fly too low, close to the sea, so that the damp would not weigh the feathers down. And so Daedalus, speaking to his son Icarus, urges him to « fly between the two » : « inter utrumque uola » (Ovid, Metamorphoses).

(Original text of 2025, machine translated in 2026.)