The Garden of Cosmic Speculation

by Charles Jencks

Telling the story of one of the most important gardens in Europe, created by the internationally celebrated architectural critic and designer Charles Jencks and his late wife, the landscape architect and author Maggie Keswick, this book looks at The Garden of Cosmic Speculation. It is a landscape that celebrates the new sciences of complexity and chaos theory and consists of a series of metaphors exploring the origins, the destiny and the substance of the Universe. The garden is full of ideas, associations, games and memories; Jencks weaves his personal account of the garden's creation into an investigation into the revelations of recent science, using landscape and design to shed light on the way we can now conceive of the Universe. This book is illustrated with year-round photography, bringing the garden's many dimensions vividly to life.

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

About the author

Charles Alexander Jencks (born 21 June 1939) is an American architecture theorist and critic, landscape architect and designer. His books on the history and criticism of modernism and postmodernism are widely read in architectural circles. He studied under the influential architectural historians Sigfried Giedion and Reyner Banham. Jencks now lives in Scotland where he designs landscape sculpture.

Reviews

[Margie · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than a garden in the sense of the word most of us would think of, the grounds of this estate have been meticulously planned. Ground was moved, plants and trees were planted, water was enlarged, sculptures, fences, buildings were added and modified. The pictures are fascinating. The text can sometimes be rather detailed and tedious. For those with scientific minds, it will be interesting.

[George]

strange book that I picked up with a Smithsonian gift certificate (thanks Alicia!)--lays out in words and pics a weird piece of acreage that's almost like a Borges landscape, along with the folks who made and maintain it...