Charles Jencks - Landscape Architecture

Landscape Architecture

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, begun in 1988, was dedicated to Jencks' late wife Maggie Keswick. The garden has such a name because Jencks, Keswick, scientists, and their friends designed the garden based on natural and scientific processes. Jencks goal was to celebrate nature, but he also incorporated elements from the modern sciences into the design. The garden contains a species of plants that are pleasurable to the eye, as well as edible. With a ‘century of extraordinary discovery in biology’ like evolution and deoxyribonucleic acid also known as DNA, and cosmology, this has given birth to a new type of garden design ’. Preserving paths and the traditional beauty of the garden is still his concern, but Jencks enhances the cosmic landscape using new tools and artificial materials. Just as Japanese Zen gardens, Persian paradise gardens, the English and French Renaissance gardens were analogies of the universe, the design represents the cosmic and cultural evolution of the contemporary world. The garden is a microcosm - as one walks through the gardens they experience the universe in miniature. According to Jencks, gardens are also autobiographical because they reveal the happiest moments, the tragedies, and the truths of the owner and family.

As the garden developed since 1988, so too did such sciences as cosmology, and this allowed a dynamic interaction between the unfolding universe, an unfolding science and a questioning design. Jencks believes that contemporary science is potentially a great moving force for creativity because it tells us the truth about the way the universe is and show us the patterns of beauty. Cosmic passion, the desire both to know and to relate to the universe, is one of the strongest drives of sentient creatures on a par with those which exercise novelists: sex, money, and power. Every creature in the universe tries to increase its knowledge, to figure out what is going on, what will happen next, and how things are evolving. This hunger for knowledge comes from the desire to relate to this process, fit in with its patterns, celebrate, and on occasion, criticize it. The laws of nature may be omnipotent, but they can also be challenged. A garden is a perfect place to try out these speculations and celebrations because it is a bit of man-made nature, a fabricated and ideal cosmic landscape, and a critique of the way the universe is.

Jencks has become a leading figure in British landscape architecture. His landscape work is inspired by fractals, genetics, chaos theory, waves and solitons. In Edinburgh, Scotland he designed the Landform at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in collaboration with Terry Farrell and Duncan Whatmore of Terry Farrell and Partners. These themes are expanded in his own private garden, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, at Portrack House near Dumfries. Designs for Black Hole Landscape, IUCAA, Pune, India, 2002; Portello Park, Milan 2002-7 (Time Garden 2004-7); Two Cells – Inverness Maggie's Centre, 2003-5; Northumberlandia Landform, 2004; Cells of Life, Bonnington House 2005 – 2009; Crawick Landforms, 2006- ; Memories of the Future, Altdobern, Landform and reclamation project, Germany; Wu Chi, Black Hole Oval Terrace, Beijing Olympic Park, 2008 and Scotloch, The Fife Earth Project, Kelty, Scotland, 2003, 2010+. He is also a furniture designer and sculptor, completing DNA Sculptures at Kew Gardens in 2003 and Cambridge University in 2005.