Former AA tutor Charles Jencks' Cosmic House to open as new museum

Former AA tutor Charles Jencks' Cosmic House is set to open as a museum and archive in September 2021. The project is curated by AA tutor Lily Jencks and has been covered in Wallpaper* Magazine in a piece by Deyan Sudjic. The piece discusses this characterful and iconic piece of British architectural history, which was the home of the Jencks family, including Maggie Keswick Jencks, who studied at the AA and whose experience of cancer led to the creation of the Maggie's Centres.

In the article, Sudjic recalled his first visit to the Cosmic House upon its completion:

'It’s more than 35 years since Charles Jencks – the critic credited with the briefly shocking idea that modern architecture was dead, and then with popularising postmodernism – first opened the door of his newly completed home and ushered me into the lobby. Except that it wasn’t a lobby. It was a ‘Cosmic Oval’, a space which would, he said, introduce me to all the themes he had explored in the design of his house in London’s Holland Park. For the next two hours he proceeded to explain them to me in head-spinning detail. He had three closely typed A4 sheets full of notes in his hand to prompt him. He checked them from time to time, just in case there were details he had forgotten to mention. But he didn’t really need to, his enthusiasm and energy kept him going without missing a beat.

It was a disorientating experience, which began with the whirlpool of mirrored doors lining the Cosmic Oval all around us. I never counted exactly how many there were, but the precise number would have been important to Charles. It was an opaque reference perhaps to the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang, which the Cosmic Oval represents, or to the number of years that elapsed from the Big Bang to the appearance of the first atoms. Or maybe the ‘quadrupole anomaly’ that describes the geometry of the Oval. Or maybe all three.'

Read the rest of the piece

Find out more about the Cosmic House