Charles Jencks

Charles Jencks is known for his books questioning Modern architecture and defining its successors - Late, Neo and
Post-Modern architecture. Divides his time between lecturing, writing and building in USA and UK. Born in
Baltimore in 1939, studied under the Modern architectural historians Siegfried Giedon and Reyner Banham. Now
designs landscape, sculpture and writes on cosmogenic art.

EDUCATION
Harvard University, BA English Lit., 1961. GSD BA and MA Architecture, 1965. London University, PhD, Architectural
History, 1970.

ACTIVITIES
1968-88 Architectural Association, London; 1974-1992 UCLA, Los Angeles visiting professor; Memberships: AA,
London; Royal Society of Arts, London.
Fulbright scholarship (London University), 1965-67; Melbourne Oration, Australia, 1974; Bosom Lectures, Royal
Society of Arts, London, 1980; Opening Lecture in RIBA series 'Modern Architecture vs the Rest', 1983; NARA Gold
Medal for Architecture, 1992. Tamblyn Lectures, University of Western Ontario, 1992. Cochran Lecture, Baltimore
Foundation for Architecture, 1992..; Olympic Keynote Address, Laussanne, 1996. Country Life Gardener of the Year,
1998. Artist of the Year, Runner Up, Glenffidich, Scotland on Sunday, 1999, Soane Museum Annual Lecture, 1999.
Chairman, Jerusalem Seminar, June 2000. AICA Inaugural Lecture. National Gallery, September 2000. RIBA Annual
Discourse, October 2000. Breathing Space Symposium, September 2003 at Dundee Contemporary Arts. The Royal
Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, Gillies Lecture, 2001. Fellowship, The Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2002. The Royal
Institution, London, Lecture, October 2003. Cheltenham Festival, Lecture, October 2003. Glasgow, Charles Rennie
Mackintosh Society, 30th Anniversary Lecture. Leeds University Annual Lecture, October 2003. World Lecture Tour,
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Texas, Chicago & New York, November 2003.
Has lectured at over forty universities throughout the world including Peking, Shanghai, Paris (École des Beaux-Arts),
Tokyo, Milan, Venice, Frankfurt, Quebec, Montreal, Oslo, Warsaw, Barcelona, Lisbon, Zurich, Vienna and Edinburgh;
and in US at Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Yale and various public museums.
Exhibitions & Juries: Selection Committee, Venice Biennale, 1980; Paternoster Square, London 1987; Curator of
Exhibition, The Architecture of Democracy, Wight Art Centre, Los Angeles and Berlin 1987; Juror for Phoenix City
Hall 1985; Aga Khan Awards for Architecture, Master Jury 1992-5; Steering Committee, 1995-8. .Juror for CCTV HQ,
Beijing 2002; Juror V&A Museum, Garden Competition, 2003

BOOKS
Meaning in Architecture, editor with George Baird and contributor, Braziller, NY 1969; Barrie & Jenkins, London
1969. Translated into French, Italian and Spanish.
Architecture 2000, Predictions and Methods, Praeger, NY 1971 and Studio Vista, London 1971. Trans. Spanish and
Japanese.
Adhocism (with Nathan Silver), Doubleday, NY 1972 and Secker and Warburg, London 1972. Part trans. French and
Italian.
Modern Movements in Architecture, Doubleday, NY 1972 and Penguin Books, London 1973. Trans. French,
Japanese, Polish, Yugoslavian and Russian. Second Edition 1985.
Le Corbusier and the Tragic View of Architecture, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1974 and Allen Lane,
London 1974. 2nd Edition 1987. Trans. Japanese, Polish and Hungarian.
The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Rizzoli, NY 1977, revised 1978, Third Ed. 1980, Fourth Ed. 1984, Fifth
Ed. 1988, Sixth Ed. 1991, Academy Editions London 1977, 1978, 1980, 1984, 1991. Translated into French, Japanese,
German, Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Czech and parts into Chinese and Italian.
The Daydream Houses of Los Angeles, Rizzoli, NY 1978 and Academy, London 1978. Translated into French.
Bizarre Architecture, Rizzoli, NY 1979 and Academy, London 1979. Translated into French and German.
Late-Modern Architecture, Rizzoli, NY 1980, Academy, London 1980. Translated into German and Spanish.
Signs, Symbols and Architecture, edited with Richard Bunt and Geoffrey Broadbent, John Wiley, NY and London
1980.
Skyscrapers - Skycities, Rizzoli, NY 1980, Academy, London 1980.
Post-Modern Classicism, Rizzoli, NY 1980, Architectural Design monograph, London 1980, translated into French.
Free-Style Classicism, Rizzoli, NY 1980, Architectural Design monograph, London 1982, translated into French.
Architecture Today, Abrams, NY 1982, Current Architecture, Academy, London 1982 (Book Club). Second Edition,
1988.
Abstract Representation, St. Martins Press, NY 1983, Architectural Design monograph, London 1983.
Kings of Infinite Space, St. Martins Press, NY; Academy, London 1983
Towards A Symbolic Architecture, Rizzoli, NY; Academy, London 1985,
Charles Jencks - Extra Edition of A&U, No. 1, Tokyo 1986.
The Architecture of Democracy, AD Monograph, London, 1987.
What is Post-Modernism? , St Martins Press, NY 1986, Academy, London 1986. Second Edition 1988. Third Edition
1989. Fourth Edition 1996.
Post-Modernism, The New Classicism in Art and Architecture, Rizzoli, NY and Academy, London 1987; German
edition, 1987, reprinted 1988.
The Prince, The Architects and New Wave Monarchy, Academy, London and Rizzoli, NY 1988.
The New Moderns, Academy London, Rizzoli, NY 1990.
The Post-Modern Reader, Editor, Academy/St. Martins, 1992.
Heteropolis - Los Angeles, The Riots & Hetero-Architecture, Academy, London & NY, 1993.
The Architecture of the Jumping Universe, Academy, London & NY, 1995. Second Edition Wiley, 1997.
Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, ed.with Karl Kropf, Wiley, London, NY 1997.
New Science - New Architecture? Architectural Design, special issue # 129, December 1997.
Ecstatic Architecture, Academy, Wiley, London, NY 1999.
Millennium Architecture, Academy, Wiley, AD, Guest Editor with Maggie Toy 2000.
Architecture 2000 and Beyond, (Critique & new predictions for 1971 book), Academy, Wiley, May 2000
Le Corbusier and the Continual Revolution in Architecture, The Monacelli Press, 2000
The New Paradigm in Architecture, the seventh edition of The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Yale
University Press, London, New Haven, 2002.
The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, Frances Lincoln Limited, London, October 2003.
Author of many articles in professional journals (Architectural Forum, Architecture Review, Domus, A&U, AD and
many popular magazines. Occasional contributor to: London Sunday Times Magazine, Encounter, Times Literary
Supplement, The Observer, The Independent, Prometheus etc. Editorial consultant with Architectural Design and an
editor with Academy Editions, London.

TELEVISION
Has appeared on television programmes in the USA and UK, written two feature films for the BBC (on Le Corbusier
and on Frank Lloyd Wright and Michael Graves). Programmes he has appeared in include: Kings of Infinite Space,
1983; Symbolic Architecture, 1985; Space on Earth, 1986; Battle of Paternoster Square, 1987; Pride of Place, 1988; A
Second Chance, 1989; and Let the People Choose, 1990. BBC Late show: New Moderns, 1990; La Villette, 1991;
Tokyo, 1991 (1992 BP Arts Journalism TV Award); Libeskind, Jewish Museum, Berlin, 1991; Culture Debate, 1991;
Frank Gehry and Los Angeles, 1992; Philip Johnson, The Godfather 1994. BBC: Gardens of the Mind. Television
programme and conference organised around work-in-progress, New World View, Tokyo and Kyoto, May 1991. TV
Film: 50 minutes "The Garden of Cosmic Speculation" 1998. Richard Meier The Frame; Daniel Libeskind; The Spiral,
1999. Appearances in film: Rebuilding the Palace; Frank Lloyd Wright - Tin Gods, 2002. Recreating Eden, Part 2, to be
shown 2004

BUILDING, DESIGN AND SCULPTURE

Furniture designed and built from 1975-84. 'Architecture in Silver': Tea and Coffee Service, Alessi, Italy, 1983,
travelling exhibition, 1984. Symbolic Furniture, exhibition Aram Designs London 1985; production by Sawaya &
Moroni, Milan, since 1986. Some furniture and drawings have been collected by museums in Japan and the Victoria
& Albert in London. Some buildings completed: Garagia Rotunda, Truro, MA 1976-77; The Elemental House (with
Buzz Yudell), Los Angeles; the Thematic House (with Terry Farrell), London, 1979-84. A survey of this work appeared
as a special section in A&U, January, 1986, explaining its symbolic intentions. His recent work includes fractal designs
of buildings and furniture as well as extensive landscape designs based on complexity theory, waves and solitons
with the late Maggie Keswick, in Scotland; an exhibition of this work was held by the Redfern Gallery in London, May
1995. Various sculpture constructed in Scotland and commission for a Landform in Edinburgh for the Scottish
Gallery of Modern Art, and DNA sculptures for James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Long Island, and
Matt Ridley, Centre for Life, Newcastle, May 2000. Designs for Black Hole Landscape, IUCAA, Pune, India, 2002.
DNA Sculpture for Royal Botanical Garden, Kew, April 2003. Portello Park, Milan to be completed 2004.
The Gulbenkian Prize for Ueda Landform, May 2004. Winner for 'Museum of the Year'. £100,000 award to The
Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
Malediction d'Agamemnon, Chaumont Garden Festival.
Water Garden of War, 2004.

MAGGIES CENTRES
A series of Cancer Caring Centres, three of which were completed by 2003. Charles Jencks, Trustee and Co-founder
with Maggie Keswick, 1995.
Edinburgh 1996, architect Richard Murphy. Glasgow 2002, architects Page & Park, Garden design, Charles Jencks.
Dundee 2003, architect Frank Gehry. 10 further centres planned

http://www.charlesjencks.com