Charles Alexander Jencks (21 June 1939 – 13 October 2019) was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of Postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
Early years and family life
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 21, 1939, Charles Alexander Jencks was the son of composer Gardner Platt Jencks and Ruth DeWitt Pearl. Jencks attended Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts, and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature at Harvard University in 1961 and a Master of Arts degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1965. In 1965 Jencks moved to the United Kingdom where he had houses in Scotland and London. In 1970, Jencks received a PhD in architectural history, studying under the noted historian Reyner Banham at University College, London. This thesis was the source for his Modern Movements in Architecture (1973) which used semiotics and other literary critical methods to study twentieth century architecture.
Jencks married Pamela Balding in 1961, and had ended July, 1973. They had two sons: one works as a landscape architect in Shanghai, while the other works for Jardines in Vietnam. He married secondly to Maggie Keswick Jencks, daughter of Sir John Keswick and Clare Elwes, by whom he had two children: John Keswick Jencks, a London-based filmmaker, married to Amy Agnew, and Lily Clare Jencks, who wed Roger Keeling in 2014. Jencks wed Louisa Lane Fox as his third wife in 2006, and was thus the stepfather of her son Henry Lane Fox and daughter Martha Lane Fox.
Architectural design
Jencks' first architectural design was a studio in the woods, a cheap mass-produced garage structure of $5,000 – titled The Garagia Rotunda, where he spent part of the summers with his family. The ad hoc use of readymade materials was championed in his polemical text with Nathan Silver Adhocism – the Case for Improvisation in 1971 and 2013. Jencks' architectural designs experimented with ideas from complexity theory.
Jencks designed his own London house in tandem with Maggie Keswick and Postmodern architects including Terry Farrell and Michael Graves. He named this home "Thematic House".
Maggie's Centres
After his second wife Maggie Keswick Jencks died in 1995, Jencks helped co-found and Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres. Based on the notion of self-help and the fact that cancer patients are often involved in a long, drawn-out struggle, the centres provide social and psychological help in an attractive setting next to large hospitals. Their architecture, landscape, and art are designed to support both patients and caregivers and to give dignity to those who, in the past, often hid their disease. Maggie Keswick Jencks is the author of the book The Chinese Garden, on which her husband also worked.
Landscape architecture and landforms
Jencks switched to landscape design as a site for symbolic exploration when Maggie asked Charles to design in the family home and garden in Scotland. The result in 2003 was the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, a series of twenty areas designed around various metaphors such as the DNA garden, Quark Walk, Fractal terrace and Comet Bridge. Further hybrid landforms and symbolic sculptures were built in Edinburgh, Milan, Long Island, New York, Cambridge, Suncheon, South Korea (with Lily Jencks), and other countries, some works from which were published in The Universe in The Landscape, 2011.
From 2010, Jencks started work on the Crawick Multiverse, a fifty-five-acre site in southwest Scotland and completed it in 2015.
The Metaphysical Landscape, was an exhibition of sculpture at Jupiter Artland, 2011. Jencks later exhibited at the Merz Gallery, Sanquhar 2016.