Charles Jencks, an architect, theorist, and artist who worked in the genre of land art, died in his London home on the night of October 13. He was 80 years old.
He is known to the general public primarily for his book "The Language of Postmodern Architecture" (published in Russian in 1985), but over the past 26 years Jenks has been involved in charity work no less than architectural theory. His brainchild, Maggie's Foundation, builds and operates free cancer support centers. They appear in large British hospitals, and there are several institutions abroad. All of them are designed without a fee by the best architects - usually friends of Jenks and his late wife Maggie Kezwick-Jenks, according to the idea and in memory of whom the foundation was created.
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Jenks is called a landscape designer, but his mature work definitely belongs to another genre - land art. Fantastic parks that he created sometimes where they used to be
there were factories or mined minerals, they will preserve the memory of him.
Charles Jenks' London residence, the Themed House in Kensington, which he and Terry Farrell rebuilt in 1979-1985 from a villa of the first half of the 19th century, is a notable postmodern monument, included in the state register as a first category object since 2018.
Jenks planned to set up a museum in it on the principle of the John Soane Museum, placing his archive there, although at first he thought to send it to his homeland, in the United States. At the end of 2017, he received the consent of the local authorities for the creation of the museum, so one can hope that these plans will be implemented.
