Charles Jencks
A RENOWNED CULTURAL THEORIST, LAND ARTIST, ARCHITECTURAL HISTORIAN, AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE MAGGIE’S CANCER CARE CENTRES.
Charles Jencks was commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch in 2005 to design an inspiring landscape on the former open-cast coal mine near Sanquhar in Dumfries and Galloway.
Crawick Multiverse is the largest of Jencks’ work in the UK and closest to what was his own private garden, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation at Portrack House near Dumfries, which he designed with his wife Maggie Keswick Jencks. While Portrack hosts a popular open day for the public once a year, Crawick Multiverse is open 7 days a week from March to November.
Charles also designed the Cells of Life landforms that feature at the entrance of Jupiter Artland in Edinburgh, Northumberlandia’s Lady of the North just north of Newcastle and the Spirals of Time in Milan.
When Maggie Jencks became ill with cancer, the couple embarked on an intensive quest to understand the condition, from emerging science and medical procedures to holistic responses and, critically, to ideas about how architecture and landscape might be employed in the traumatic encounter with cancer. Before her death in 1995, Maggie wrote the blueprint for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres and started design work for the first centre in Edinburgh. The Maggie’s Centres now support anyone effected by cancer in 27 centres throughout the UK, and abroad, designed by internationally renowned architects, landscape architects and interior designers, and branded by Charles as ‘an architecture of hope’ for those affected by cancer.
There is a museum in London, in what was once the home of Charles and Maggie Jencks. Fiercely active until the day he died in 2019, Jencks put in place the framework for The Cosmic House to be preserved as a museum and to provide a forum for the ongoing discussion of ideas in architecture, design, science and culture. The Jencks Foundation opened The Cosmic House to the public for the first time in September 2021.
At first glance of the site at Crawick he saw what he described as ‘dull ground, rocks… the end of nature’, but as he studied the site he saw a wealth of exciting possibilities. Instead of an industrial wasteland, he saw the bones of a marvellous ecology. The terrain offered a ready-made meadow, a desert, a gorge and a brook. The dropping of excess slag had even created a ridge which offered panoramic views of the beautiful surrounding valleys. These, coupled with the desire to celebrate the breathtaking wider landscape, helped Jencks’ vision take shape.
From Belvedere, the highest point of the site, looking at the path lined by upright stones on the North-South axis, it seems incredible that each massive stone was selected for their particular spot and positioned to reflect the story of the cosmos. Many of the stones were selected by Alistair Clark, who worked alongside Charles Jencks in creating his land artworks.
Charles maintained an involvement with the site until his untimely death in 2019, adding further installations to the original design and advising on the development and maintenance of the site.
The Jencks’ family home in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland features Charles’s celebrated garden and the subject of his book The Garden of Cosmic Speculation (Frances Lincoln, 2003).
He has also written numerous other books on contemporary arts and building, including The Architecture of Hope (2015), best-seller The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (re-issued as The New Paradigm in Architecture, 2002), What is Post-Modernism? (fourth edition, 1995) and The Architecture of the Jumping Universe (second edition, 1997).
