Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks – Life, Thought, and Legacy

Charles Jencks (June 21, 1939 – October 13, 2019) was an American architectural theorist, critic, and landscape designer best known for defining postmodernism in architecture and for his symbolic landform works such as the Garden of Cosmic Speculation.

Introduction

Charles Alexander Jencks was an American-born architectural historian, theorist, critic, and landscape designer whose work deeply shaped architectural discourse in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Although not primarily known as a building designer in the conventional sense, Jencks’s influence stems from his writing, his symbolic landscapes, and his efforts to synthesize science, culture, and architecture into poetic expression.

Jencks became particularly identified with postmodernism—both as describer and provocateur—and also explored cosmology, complexity theory, and metaphor through his landform works. His legacy persists in architecture, landscape design, and cultural criticism.

Early Life, Education & Formative Influences

Charles Jencks was born on June 21, 1939 in Baltimore, Maryland, to Gardner Platt Jencks (a composer) and Ruth DeWitt Pearl.

He attended Brooks School in North Andover, Massachusetts. English Literature at Harvard University, earning his bachelor’s degree in 1961. Graduate School of Design, earning a Master of Arts in Architecture in 1965.

In 1965, Jencks moved to the United Kingdom. University College London (UCL) under Reyner Banham, completing his PhD around 1970. Modern Movements in Architecture.

These academic foundations—English literature, architecture, semiotics, theory—framed Jencks’s later approach of reading architecture as cultural text.

Career & Major Works

Writing, Theory & Criticism

Jencks is perhaps most influential for his role as critic and public intellectual in architecture. Over his lifetime he published more than thirty books.

Some of his key works include:

  • Modern Movements in Architecture (1973), which challenged the notion of a monolithic modernism and introduced more pluralistic reading of architectural movements.

  • The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (1977), one of his most famous books that popularized the discourse of postmodern architecture (later revised in several editions).

  • The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Post-Modern Architecture (later edition)

  • Critical Modernism: Where Is Post-Modernism Going? (2007) — exploring the relationship and tensions between modernism and postmodernism.

  • The Story of Post-Modernism: Five Decades of the Ironic, Iconic and Critical (2011) — a retrospective on the development of postmodernism.

  • The Universe in the Landscape, a work connecting his landscape and landform thinking with cosmological metaphors.

Jencks was critical of the “univalent” tendencies of modern architecture (i.e. singular, reductive forms) and advocated for double coding, hybridity, symbolism, and contextual pluralism.

He famously declared that modern architecture “died” on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m. — the time when the Pruitt-Igoe housing projects (St. Louis) were being demolished. He used this as a symbolic moment marking the failure of the modernist ideal.

Jencks also developed “Evolutionary Tree” diagrams to map architectural styles and their genealogies—an iconic method in his writings.

He contributed to public debates, television, and media—writing scripts for BBC programs on Le Corbusier, Michael Graves, and others.

Landscape & Landform Design

Later in his career, Jencks turned his attention more to landscape design, earthworks, and symbolic landforms. His landscapes often weave scientific, cosmological, and mathematical motifs into poetic forms.

Some of his notable projects include:

  • Garden of Cosmic Speculation in Scotland (from the 1980s onward) — perhaps his most famous landscape work.

  • Thematic House / Cosmic House in London (originally Thematic House) — his home and a symbolic architectural manifesto.

  • Landforms in Scotland such as Crawick Multiverse, Cells of Life, Spirals of Time, and Landform Ueda.

  • Projects in Milan (Parco Portello), Beijing (Wu Chi in the Olympic Park), and collaborations in other countries.

His landscapes attempt to bridge art, science, nature, and architecture — often with metaphorical, fractal, or cosmic references.

Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres

After the death of his second wife, Maggie Keswick Jencks (in 1995), Jencks co-founded the Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres. These are small architectural and landscape environments attached to major hospitals, designed to support cancer patients emotionally and spiritually.

He commissioned prominent architects (e.g., Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, OMA) to create some of the centres.

Jencks also established the RIBA Charles Jencks Award in 2003 to honor individuals or practices contributing both to theory and practice.

Philosophy, Style & Intellectual Outlook

Jencks’s architectural philosophy centers on pluralism, symbolism, metaphor, hybridity, and the dialogue between culture, science, and built form. He resisted the flattening uniformity of modernism and pushed for richer, more poetic architectural language.

Key thematic elements:

  • Double coding / multiple readings: Jencks argued that buildings should operate on multiple levels of meaning—utilitarian, symbolic, cultural.

  • Contextual pluralism: He believed architecture must respond to culture, context, history, and locality rather than enforce a single universal style.

  • Science & cosmology: Later in his career he wove scientific metaphors (fractals, black holes, DNA, cosmology) into landscapes and architecture to explore boundaries between nature and culture.

  • Architecture as narrative: For Jencks, buildings and landscapes could tell stories, embody metaphors, and provoke reflection.

His approach is sometimes criticized as overly symbolic, esoteric, or speculative, but it remains provocative and influential in critical and theoretical circles.

Legacy and Influence

  • Shaping postmodern discourse: Jencks is widely regarded as one of the architects' theorists who gave postmodern architecture a coherent vocabulary and cultural legitimacy.

  • Bridging architecture & landscape: His landform works show how architecture can extend into landscape to express ideas at large scale.

  • Influence on healing architecture: Through Maggie’s Centres, Jencks advanced the idea that architecture and environment contribute to care and wellbeing.

  • Continued institutional presence: The Jencks Foundation and The Cosmic House (his former home) act as repositories and public labs for his archives, exhibitions, and ideas.

  • Recognition & awards: His ideas continue to be honored via the RIBA Jencks Award and citations in architectural scholarship.

Even after his death in 2019, his theoretical frameworks, diagrams, and landforms continue to spark debate, reinterpretation, and inspiration.

Quotes & Aphorisms

Here are a few notable remarks by Charles Jencks:

“Modern architecture died on July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m.” — referring to the demolition of Pruitt-Igoe, a symbolic turning point.

“The architectural metaphor is central — architecture is a language with syntax, semantics, and symbolism.”

“I like architecture that has both aesthetic and symbolic depth, that works on multiple levels.” (paraphrased from his writings)

“In landform building I try to hybridize garden, sculpture, architecture, and epigraphy.”

Lessons from Charles Jencks

From Jencks’s life and thinking we can draw several lessons:

  1. Theory is creative tool — Writing and diagramming can shape the way we see architecture.

  2. Pluralism over dogma — Reject monolithic approaches; embrace complexity, hybridization, layered meaning.

  3. Link art, science, and culture — Architecture and landscape can evoke metaphors drawn from cosmology, biology, and mathematics.

  4. Design with empathy — His Maggie’s Centres show how architectural spaces influence human experience and care.

  5. Legacy through ideas — Even when built work is limited, ideas can steer discourse and practice long after.

Conclusion

Charles Jencks was a singular figure — less a prolific building architect than a provocateur, theorist, and poetic landscapist. Through his writing, diagrams, gardens, and advocacy, he reshaped how architects think about modernism, postmodernism, symbolism, and the cosmic dimension of space.

Cite this Page: Citation

Articles by the author

Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts), when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite.

Charles Jencks

I'd been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called 'Not Sculpture Park,' because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down.

Charles Jencks

I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational.

Charles Jencks

Like our attitude to love, truth and goodness, we seem to be confident about knowing what beauty is - certain, even dogmatic - until we think hard about the idea, whereupon all confidence flies away.

Charles Jencks

Mies van der Rohe's architecture and modern architecture in general suffered from not only being repetitive, but not explaining to the populous what the different rooms were for.

Charles Jencks

If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity.

Charles Jencks

If you look at Gothic detailing right down to the bottom of a column or the capital of a column, it's a small version of the whole building; that's why, like dating the backbones of a dinosaur, a good historian can look at a detail of a Gothic building and tell you exactly what the rest of the building was, and infer the whole from the parts.

Charles Jencks

A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases.

Charles Jencks