The Internet, as an accessible network with global connectivity, presents itself as the likely solution for the supporting infrastructure of cyberspace. In contrast, the field of Virtual Environments (VE) is fragmented with a wide proliferation of different systems, as a result of the current development trend. However, these divergent systems present a significant overlap of functionality that represents a waste of development resources and a detriment to innovation. This paper proposes Mayhem as a new approach to the design and development of VE systems. Our approach relies heavily on component design methodology coupled with a simple layered approach to system architectures. The combination of the two promotes the construction of systems from smaller building blocks, which may have been developed by different sources, each specializing in the supported functionality. Although Mayhem promotes the trend of middleware, it requires a common base infrastructure - the Java Adaptive Dynamic Environment (JADE). To demonstrate how to build a VE system using Mayhem, the paper describes a simple prototype of a VE and some of its key building blocks.