The Cell and DNA
Maggie's Centre (Gatehouse), Glasgow
The Garden of Cosmic SpeculationDumfries
Landform Ueda
Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Spirals of Time
Parco Portello, Milan
2002-2003
1999-2002
2002-2008
1989+
Northumberlandia
Blagdon Estate, Newcastle
The Scottish World
St Ninians, Kelty
Cells of Life
Jupiter Artland, Kirknewton, nr Edinburgh
Dividing Cells
Maggie's Centre, Inverness
2005, Construction 2010+
2003-2010
2003, Construction 2010+
2003-2005
Gretna Landmark
Gretna
Doublewalk
Midpark Hospital, Dumfries
Rail Garden of Scottish WorthiesPortrack, Dumfries
Wu Chi
Olympic Forest Park, Beijing
In Development 2011+ (with Cecil Balmond)
2008
Construction 2010+ (with Jencks2)
2003-2006
Cosmic Rings of Cern
Cern, Geneva
In Development 2008+ (with Jencks2)
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The Story of Post-Modernism Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical in Architecture
Published by Wiley, London 2011
The Universe in the Landscape Landforms by Charles Jencks
Published by Frances Lincoln Limited, London 2011
The Architecture of Hope: Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres
Edited with Edwin Heathcote
Available from Amazon
Critical Modernism
where is post-modernism going?
Published by John Wiley & Sons, London and New York 2007
Iconic Building
The Power of Enigma
Published by Frances Lincoln Limited, London and New York 2005
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation
Published by Frances Lincoln Limited, London
and New York 2003
Heteropolis
Los Angeles, The Riots and The Strange Beauty of Hetero-Architecture
Published by Academy Additions, London and New York 1993
The Post-Modern Reader Reader
Editor
Published by John Wiley & Sons (2nd Edition), 2010
Le Corbusier
and the Continental Revolution in Architecture
Published by The Monacelli Press 2000
Post-Modernism Resurgent
Ten buildings that made a difference
July 2011
Wigglesworth House
June 2010
The Guardian
Totally Cosmic - The Life Mounds of Charles Jencks, June 2011
RA Magazine
Postmodernism for the uninitiated Autumn 2011
Nature Magazine
Cosmic Gardener
May 2011
Scottish Field
Ahead of the Curve
2011
Charles Jencks is Trustee and Co-founder of Maggie's Centres, a charity that has become influential for its enlightened provision of uplifting environments for cancer care, designed by some of the worlds most renowned architects. Maggie Keswick Jencks (1941-1995) developed the idea of a Cancer Caring Centre, along with her friends, Laura Lee, the CEO of Maggie's, Marcia Blakenham, and Charles. A short history of this is recounted in 2010 and her booklet 1997(ed. Marcia Blakenham).
Maggie's Centres can be found in the following locations:
Edinburgh 1996, Architect Richard Murphy; Landscape Architect Emma Keswick
Glasgow (Gatehouse) 2002, Architect David Page; Landscape Architect
Dundee 2003, Architect Frank Gehry; Landscape Architect Arabella Lennox-Boyd
Highlands 2005, Architect David Page; Landscape Architect
Fife 2006, Architect Zaha Hadid
London 2008, Architect Lord Richard Rogers; Landscape Architect Dan Pearson
Cheltenham 2010, Sir Richard MacCormac; Landscape Architect Dr Christine Facer Hoffman
Glasgow (Gartnavel) 2011, Architect Rem Koolhaas; Landscape Architect Lily Jencks
Nottingham 2011, Architect Piers Gough CBE
South West Wales 2011, Architect Kisho Kurokawa; Landscape Architect Kim Wilkie
Lanarkshire In Development, Architect Neil Gillespie; Landscape Architect rankinfraser
Oxford In Development, Architect Chris Wilkinson & Jim Eyre; Landscape Architect Flora Gathorne Hardy
Hong Kong In Development, Architect Frank Gehry; Landscape Architect Lily Jencks
Online Centre In Development
Future Planned Maggie's Centres
North East (Newcastle), Aberdeen, Barcelona
www.maggiescentres.org
"Above all, what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying"
Maggie Keswick Jencks
Forty major areas, gardens, bridges, landforms, sculptures, terraces, fences and architectural works. Covering thirty acres in the Borders area of Scotland, the garden uses nature to celebrate nature, both intellectually and through the senses, including the sense of humor. A water cascade of steps recounts the story of the universe, a terrace shows the distortion of space and time caused by a black hole, a "Quark Walk" takes the visitor on a journey to the smallest building blocks of matter, and a series of landforms and lakes recall fractal geometry.
Landform Ueda was conceived to enliven a flat lawn and shield noise from the side road. It faces two ways, to the gallery and across the road to its sister, the Dean Centre. The connecting 'S' form also derives from two chaotic attractors, the Ueda and Henan (named respectively after Japanese and French scientists). With Terry Farrell & Partners and Ian White Associates.
An urban park in northwest Milan with three major landforms, ponds, gardens, and sculpture.
Landscape and gardens always carry the imprint of time on their surface and in their growth and decay. For the Parco Portello in Milan the underlying concept is the Ritmo del Tempo, the various rhythms of time that pulsate on earth and in the universe, the basis for music. Thus here the three large mounds convey the three eras of cultural time in Milan - prehistory, history and the future - and the small garden portrays many rhythms from the heartbeat to the four seasons to the major events of the universe. All in all these rhythms of growing and walking are in tight syncopation.
Moundette, garden and DNA sculpture (12 feet wide, 18 feet high) with RNA planting and twists in aluminium. The Centre is housed in a nineteenth-century gatehoue to the university, converted by the architects Page and Park into a friendly spiral of space.
The aluminium coils unfold from a nucleus, a small moundette, and lean towards the seat. Lines of planting and stones, in shades of purple, pick up the spiral theme and curve around the mound as RNA which then turns into protein (pestle-and-mortar-shaped rocks). The protein built up is also represented by stacked river rocks. The plan shows these purple elements and the aluminium seats with their twisted waveforms.
Eight landforms and a connecting causeway surround four lakes and a flat parterre for sculpture exhibits. The theme is the life of the cell, cells as the basic units of life, and the way one cell divides into two in stages called mitosis (presented in a red sandstone rill). Curving concrete seats have cell models surrounded by Liesegang rocks. Their red iron concentric circles bear an uncanny relationship to the many organelles inside the units of life. From above, the layout presents their early division into membranes and nuclei, a landform celebration of the cell as the basis of life.
The theme of cells dividing, mitosis, is organised around the basic idea of life, the theme of healthy cell division and growth. The idea of interconnected, living cells is conveyed by the visual and physical connections. Both the building, with its green copper, and the landforms with their green turf, share a related colour and a similar language of forms: similar angles, dimensions and vesica shape. The Centre, designed by Page & Park architects, is to the south of the Raigmore Hospital.
Landform as gateway, abstraction of movement and human form. Made of 1.5 million tonnes of earth, she will be 34 metres (112 feet) high and 400 metres (1,300 feet) long. The landform can be enjoyed in parts and within many different contexts including the distant landscape, the causeways, lakes, willow islands, and viewing pavilions.
Landforms, lochs and boulders for a coal site that represent a walk around the 4 continents where the Scots settled over the last 400 years. The concept includes the fact that many foreigners have settled in Scotland and contributed to its identity. Indeed, the notions of geology as destiny, the Rock People, and the Atlantic People that plied the shores from Galicia to Norway (from roughly 5,000-1,500 BC) are part of the larger Scottish World. A mappa mundi presents the creativity of the Scots around the world.
Ueda Landform
Metaphysical Landsapes
"We all have a natural response to landscape. But for me, today, this sensuous reaction also engages the mind and that entails a content-driven and hybrid design. My miniature landforms are where I try out mixing media - of writing, signs and the art of nature itself, particularly strange and beautiful rocks. We have a parity with nature and that metaphysical balancing-act leads to a style and artform."
Kirknewton, Metaphysical Landscapes, May 11 - September 2011
