The Cosmic House, one of the world’s most important examples of Post-Modern architecture, was desi
Operating as usual
In 1982, Charles Jencks asked Ilinca Cantacuzino to design four circles of coloured glass depicting the seasons to cover the lights in the Dome of Water whirlpool bath. This is Cantacuzino’s design for the winter vignette.
Read more about Cantacuzino's work for The Cosmic House here: https://www.jencksfoundation.org/explore/text/moonwell-zodiac-ballusterdiscs-and-four-seasons-vignettes
Photo: Ilinca Cantacuzino, Design for the Winter Vignette, c. 1978-1983
Happy New Year! 🎉 Today, we’re thinking of time in the spirit of the Solar Stair at The Cosmic House which was designed to correlate with the months of the year. Beginning in January, the staircase ascends through the months until one reaches the top in December. Each of its 52 steps contain discs designed in 1982 by Ilinca Cantacuzino which correlate to the astrological signs of the zodiac.
Photo 1: Zodiac Ballusterdiscs in the Solar Stair of The Cosmic House. Dan Weill Photography.
Photo 2: Ilinca Cantacuzino, Sketch for Jencks Ballusterdiscs, c. 1978–1983.
Our Picks ✨
Archive Assistant Umut has chosen the Slide Scrapers in the Architectural Library.
‘The two Slide Scrapers really represent Charles Jencks’ sense of humour and love of illusion. Visitors are often surprised to hear a metallic tang as they knock on the wooden exterior. That is because the Slide Scrapers are in fact metal Bisley cabinets, slapped with MDF and painted over to look like wood.
Within the drawers are slides of buildings relating to Charles’ travels around the world and there are more surprises. A box (or two) of mint chocolate thins, containing a different sort of treat – more slides! Perhaps mercifully from a conservational point of view, not smelling of mint chocs.’
Images:
1. The Architectural Library at the Cosmic House. Slide from the Jencks Archive
2. The Architectural Library, photograph by Sue Barr
3. Photograph by Umut Kav
4. Charles Jencks, ‘Design for Slide Scraper’, c. 1978-1984
Season’s Greetings and best wishes for the New Year from The Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House! ❄
Dear Friends,
Thank you to all who have visited us in this inaugural year, either visiting The Cosmic House, participating in our public or laboratory programme, or perhaps reading some of our new online commissions. We’ve so enjoyed this first year experimenting with what the foundation and a new house museum in London can provide, as well as starting to catalogue and activate the Charles Jencks archive through an exhibition, salons and several collaborations. Special thanks go to our fantastic volunteers who make opening the house possible.
We look forward to welcoming you back in 2023, and hope for a more peaceful new year full of optimism and exciting new collaborations.
The Cosmic House will be closed to the public between the months of January and March. For more information about tickets to The Cosmic House and the upcoming programme of the Jencks Foundation, keep an eye out for our Spring Newsletter.
Warmly,
Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House team
https://www.jencksfoundation.org/
Photo: Hephaestu-Claus: the Winter Room fireplace in The Cosmic House crowned by the bust of Hephaestus by Celia Scott
In 2022 we partnered with the Architecture Foundation to launch a new architectural writing prize, with one of its three categories dedicated to writing as an architectural medium. Judges included Edwin Heathcote, Financial Times architecture critic; Shumi Bose, senior lecturer at Central St Martins; Jeremy Millar, artist and head of writing MA programme at the Royal College of Art
⭐️ Today, we’re thrilled to announce the winners! ⭐️
First Prize: Chloe Shang, ‘Poems from the Patient Patient’
Second Prize: Stephanie Guest and Kate Riggs, ‘The Real World Room’
Runner Ups: Andrew Carr, ‘Brackets’ and Lotte van Gelder, ‘Soft Monuments/Nachtegalenlaantje’
Highly Commended: Toby Blackman, ‘Berggasse 19: Spatialising the Subjects of Exile and Absence’; Gavin Herbertson, ‘“A New But Old Direction”: Reading Global Modernism in Architecture’; Kivanc Kilinc, ‘Why Would Flying Buttresses Not Fly? Viollet-le-Duc Talks with the Reims Cathedral’; Jordan Whitewood-Neal, ‘Two Doors’
Visit the link below to read more, as well as the winning entry by Chloe Shang: https://www.jencksfoundation.org/architecture-foundation-writing-prize-2022
Image: Madelon Vriesendorp, ‘St Jerome reading Rem Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL’, (1997).
A very snowy Monday at The Cosmic House ❄️ Photo of Time Garden from the terrace.
The Jencks Foundation and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) are pleased to announce the 2022 recipient of the RIBA Charles Jencks Award is Forensic Architecture!
This annual award is given to an individual or practice who has simultaneously made a major contribution to both the theory and practice of architecture.
Led by Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture is a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, founded in 2010. Forensic architecture is the process and presentation of architectural evidence in relation to the built environment within legal and political processes. The agency partners with institutions from grassroots activists to international NGOs to investigate human rights violations on behalf of communities and individuals affected by conflict, environmental violence, and police brutality. They have presented their work in national and international courts, truth commissions, parliamentary enquiries, and in art and architectural exhibitions.
Forensic Architecture will be presented with the award at the RIBA on 22nd February at 7pm, after which they will give a lecture and be interviewed by Thomas Aquilina from the New Architecture Writers programme.
To attend, please register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/riba-charles-jencks-award-2022-forensic-architecture-tickets-476565689807
Our Picks ✨
Martyna, a Volunteer, has picked the William Stok frieze in the Cosmic Oval. She says:
‘The Cosmic Oval is one of the most magical spots in the house. One is greeted by dim lighting and seemingly countless mirrored doors, each with a duplicate door handle. This mystical, disorienting experience anticipates what one will find during their visit. Major themes of the house are presented on each door and will accompany you throughout your journey. William Stok’s frieze above is one of my favourite parts of the Cosmic Oval. The light here is very theatrical, while monochromatic, phantom figures from different centuries and continents meet here to discuss the history of the universe. Among them are the Egyptian physicist and architect Imhotep, Pythagoras, the Chinese poet and politician Tao Yuanming, Hadrian, Abbot Suger, Erasmus, The Jesuit Astrologer, John Donne, Borromini, Prince Hito, Thomas Jefferson and Hannah Arendt.’
Images:
1. The Cosmic Oval, photograph by Sue Barr
2. Close-up of the Cosmic Oval frieze, ⒸWilliamStok
3. Section of a maquette of the William Stok frieze, ⒸWilliamStok
Our Picks ✨
Volunteer, Jess, picked the acoustic connection between the Bathpool and the Foursquare room.
‘I love how the most private room has a constant opening. For me, this space unfolds the communication between Maggie Keswick and Charles Jencks, both in their private life and as artistic collaborators. The Bathpool was mostly designed by Maggie and its layout gives two opposite sensations at once – from the perspective of the Foursquare room, the body appears to look submerged, while simultaneously, looking out towards the window in the Bathpool, the body seems to float over the garden. When surrounded by the water quality of the green tiles, one can really feel the delicate comfort of this room and this connecting gap is the apex of this feeling.’
Happy ! Today, we're thinking about the Cosmic Loo ✨ This photograph features what Jencks' called the 'Kaleidoscope' -- the ceiling above the loo which he thought might inspire 'interesting speculations on the nature of the universe'.
Image: Cosmic Loo at The Cosmic House, ca. 1985 from Jencks, 'Towards a Symbolic Architecture' (London: Academy Editions, 1985)
A rainy day calls for reading 📚
Image: The Architectural Library at the Cosmic House. Slide from the Jencks Archive.
Our Picks ✨
One of our volunteers, Caroline, has chosen the painting in the Egyptian room.
‘One of my favourite objects in The Cosmic House is found in the Egyptian room. This painting, by Ben Johnson, plays with the viewer by depicting the Summer room in what at first seems like a corruption, or an abstraction of its actual format. However, upon further inspection, the painting depicts the large mirrored cupboard doors in the Summer room, in which the chairs and Allen Jones’ painting are reflected, while at the same time looking forward towards the Spring room and the Egyptian room, within which it is housed.
As a result, much like the mirrored door of the Future Pavilion in the garden, the mirror within the painting urges the viewer to look both backwards and forwards at the same time, an activity which Charles Jencks took very seriously in both his writing and his architectural designs.’
Charles Moore's architecture was considered a key example of Post-Modernism by Jencks, with Piazza d'Italia in New Orleans (1978) featured on the cover of the 1981 edition of The Language of Post-Modern Architecture.
The American architect, writer and educator Charles Moore was born in 1925.
Happy Birthday to Scottish poet and artist Ian Hamilton Finlay who was born on this day, the 28th of October in 1925. Finlay, a friend of the Jenckses', was responsible for this iconic print currently on view in our gallery exhibition, ‘Cosmic, Comic, Cosmetic’.
Photo: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Architecture of Our Time, c. 1980s. Print on paper.
Autumn at the Cosmic House 🍁🍂
Our Picks ✨
Welcome to our new series, where staff and volunteers pick their favourite view, object or architectural feature in The Cosmic House and explain the reasoning behind their choice!
Museum Assistant, Marie, has chosen the view of Eduardo Paolozzi’s Black Hole mosaic from the top of the Solar Stair.
‘I like the way the stairs resemble a galaxy, with the Sun, Earth and Moon in different positions on the handrail representing the solar system. The eye is led to the centre, where you find Paolozzi’s mosaic of the Black Hole. The mosaic sparkles in the light, and with the strategically placed rooflight above, there is always a shining orb in its centre.’
Images:
1. The Solar Stair, photograph by Alexander James.
2. The Solar Stair, photograph by Heini Schneebeli, 1984.
3. Eduardo Paolozzi, Sketch for the Black Hole Mosaic at The Cosmic House, 1983. A birthday gift for Maggie Keswick, with inscription in the bottom left corner. Photo: Sue Barr.
'how to pass through a door', a new site-specific sound installation by our first artist-in-residence Marysia Lewandowska opens today at The Cosmic House on the anniversary of Maggie Keswick Jencks’ birthday.
Over the past 20 years, Lewandowska's practice has explored the public functions of archives, museums and exhibitions, as well as recovering women's cultural contributions. Her new installation activates Maggie’s voice using both spoken recordings and written texts from the archive which highlight her involvement in the design, managing and collaborations of the house she shared with her collaborator and husband, Charles.
To learn more, read the artist's interview with Jencks Foundation Artistic Director Eszter Steierhoffer here: https://www.jencksfoundation.org/explore/text/interview-with-marysia-lewandowska
Image: Maggie Keswick Jencks, photographed by Charles Jencks, London, c.1979
A year ago today the Jencks Foundation was established, and The Cosmic House opened its doors to visitors for the first time.
In the past year we have welcomed over 2,500 visitors, launched our new website, and worked on cataloguing our extensive archive to make it available to the public and to researchers. We’ve hosted several residencies, and have supported individuals, initiatives and institutions through grants and fellowships. We couldn’t have done it without our fantastic collaborators, our audiences, our team and everyone who has contributed to our projects in the past year.
Thank you, and stay tuned for more! 💫
Photo: Dan Weill Photography.
The Cosmic House updated their website address.
19 Lansdowne Walk
W113AH
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