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- 1978- (Creation)
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Name of creator
Biographical history
Maggie Keswick Jencks, Charles Jencks’ wife and collaborator, was a Scottish writer, artist and garden designer. She collaborated on the design of The Cosmic House and helped shape the intellectual life that unfolded there until her untimely death in 1995 at the age of 54.
She was born on the 10th of October 1941, the only child of Sir John Keswick and Lady Clare Keswick. As Sir John was the head of the Asian conglomerate Jardine Matheson, Maggie was brought up travelling to China, Hong Kong and South-East Asia at a time when few foreigners visited. During her visits, she developed a love for Chinese culture, in particular the highly designed classical gardens of Suzhou and Hangzhou in Western China. Her book *The Chinese Garden* (first pub 1978) was one of the most respected books on these intensely designed gardens for many years, and the first book of its kind written in English. Maggie and Charles met when she studied at the Architectural Association where Charles was teaching, and they married in 1978. Maggie and Charles travelled extensively together and sometimes lectured in the same venue (she on Chinese Gardens, and he on Post Modernism). This is also the year they purchase the building that would become The Cosmic House. Maggie was particularly influential in the design of the garden, although she was involved in every decision about the design of the house. Maggie was influential in Charles’ ideas on Post-Modernism, being a demanding debate partner on cultural issues and a keen editor of his manuscripts. She had an excellent hand at drawing and painting and produced many beautiful sketchbooks.
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The Cosmic House is one of the key landmarks in the development of Post-Modernist architecture. A hugely influential distillation of the ideas at the heart of Post-Modern thought in culture and science, it is a remarkable testament to the polymathic talents of Maggie and Charles Jencks.
Built between 1978 and 1983 the house subverts the genteel architecture of Holland Park, exaggerating, caricaturing and embellishing the white stucco until it becomes a microcosm of contemporary architectural theory, semiotics and historiography. An almost human character is imposed on the architecture with each element related to the human body and then to the larger cosmos. It is an architectural essay about our relationship to proportion, building, culture and the universe.
Densely packed with ideas, symbols and motifs, its architecture embraces an entire cosmos of architectural allusion, history, metaphor and reference. Switching between pop and classical culture, between high art and accessible kitsch, it became a built manifesto for the architecture that emerged in reaction to the slowly solidifying canon of Modernism as it faded in the late mid-century. Designed in collaboration with architect (Sir) Terry Farrell, and built between 1978 and 1983, the house became a forum for conversation and dialogue at the epicentre of the Post-Modern moment and the cultural discourse around ideas, history, science and aesthetics.
The spaces are characteristically Post-Modern with multiple changes in levels, shifted axes, fragmented forms, architectural quotations, views obliquely across spaces and glimpses of neighbouring spaces enticing the visitor around the interior. Unusually for an interior of this period it remains substantially as it was designed, built and lived in with all its original bespoke furniture and fittings intact.