The winning design for the Stanley Hotel’s hedge maze, created by New York architect Mairim Standing, was interestingly not a reflection of where the idea for the maze first came from.

A hedge maze was never a feature of the historic Estes Park hotel, but it did serve as a major plot point in the horror novel by Stephen King, allegedly inspired by his stay at the Stanley, and the movie directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1980 — “The Shining.”

Grand Heritage Hotel Group President John Cullen wanted to celebrate his 20th anniversary of owning the hotel by installing the hedge maze partly because he was getting tired of people asking about where it was. This increasingly happened after the 1997 miniseries of The Shining, written by King himself and filmed on location at the Stanley.

It would stand to reason that all of the creepiness and horror that was evident in the book, movie, and mini-series’ hedge mazes would be incorporated into the design selected from more than 300 entries received from all over the world during the contest period which ended in January.

But Standing’s design is elegant and flowing, designed to “create a sense of fluidity and calmness,” said the architect. There is an art-deco-esque “S” and “H” incorporated into the maze’s structure and a sense of classic style that Standing hopes pays homage to the iconic hotel.

“I wanted to be true to the style of the hotel, the classic architecture and classic renovations, the original detailing,” Standing said. “This is a classy place, and the maze should reflect the place, and the architecture that goes along with it. I wanted to be true to the hotel and the history of the hotel as opposed to the Kubrick or the King stories about the hotel.”

Standing and her husband, Alastair (also an architect in New York), were enjoying the prize she won for creating the winning maze design last weekend – all-inclusive passes to the

Stanley Film Festival (yes, a horror film festival). After seeing the hotel firsthand and taking the hotel’s tour, she is confident her design will fit in nicely.

She was born in Manhattan, lived in the Bronx for a while, and then her family moved to New Jersey. She completed a five-year accredited program in architecture and an additional year in business management at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Upon graduation, she raced back to New York. “I wanted to get back right away,” she said, “I love the city.”

Her first job was with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, designing all of their office spaces — above and below ground. “I got to know the city from a different perspective,” she said.

She loved designing sets and did so for several off-Broadway productions in Brooklyn, at Columbia University and for the Fringe Festival before she became a licensed architect. There were several things she tried out, including designing golf courses, but that was the limit of her landscape architecture experience.

Standing currently works for a financial firm with offices all around the country, designing and building out office spaces.

“I’m in charge of 19 domestic offices but on the side, I do things like kitchen and bath designs, custom closets (I’m an organizational freak) — and entering contests,” she said

She’d been entering contests for 15 years, and heard about the Stanley hedge maze contest — open to anyone of any background — through an interior design website to which she subscribes.

Standing was immediately attracted to the idea. As a child, she loved mazes and puzzles — “more than homework!” she claimed, “the more pieces the better.” This project was right up her alley.

Compared to other architecture competitions she had entered, this one had “fairly loose guidelines,” she said, “which allowed for a lot of creativity. This would be fun, I thought.”

After sketching it out for a couple of days, she translated her design to the computer.

That’s when she realized that the space — the front lawn of the Stanley Hotel — was not a mirror image of itself.

“The left side was longer than the right side ,” she said, “so it was really tricky because I wanted it to be somewhat of a mirror image, but it wasn’t. I wanted to make sure when putting the ‘S’ and the ‘H’ in there that it compensated for the (lack of intrinsic symmetry). In old architecture times, people faked perspectives in trying to get the view you wanted.

“It wasn’t even but I wanted to make it look even,” she said. She had to play with the font, and ended up creating her own when placing the initials of the hotel into the maze.

After working out the required details — the four-foot paths, the 30-inch shrubs, etc — Standing realized there was an extra 2 feet that couldn’t be accounted for. After receiving permission not to use all the space in the template, she submitted her entry.

Standing enjoyed her stay in Estes Park last weekend and is looking forward to returning when the maze is installed. Originally slated for April of this year, the installation has been rescheduled to June, said Tina Harlow of the Stanley Hotel.

Sitting under the stars in Estes Park, it struck Standing how special this mountain town is — and how different it is from New York. Her maze design is a manifestation of differences, too — those between expectations and reality.

“Because mazes tend to be the opposite of (how I designed this one),” she said. “In a maze, you tend to get scared or anxious, or you don’t even want to go in there because you don’t know how you’re going to get out.

“I was looking for the flow. To find something that will work as a maze, but also to be able to walk through it and it won’t have 20 dead ends.

“People come here to relax. The last thing you want to do is get stuck or lost in a maze.”

Standing is glad she went with her gut instinct — to create something elegant from a horror-movie idea.