Dr. Charles Jencks Lecture

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation:
Nature Talking to Nature

Dr. Jencks is famous for his innovative garden designs. In 2004 the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art won the Gulbenkian Prize as Museum of the Year for Dr. Jencks’ dramatic and radical landscape project titled Landform. His recent work includes fractal designs of buildings and furniture, as well as extensive landscape designs based on complexity theory, waves, and solitons. These themes are expanded in his own private garden, the Garden of Cosmic Speculation, at Portrack House near Dumfries, Scotland. He is also a furniture designer and sculptor, completing the DNA Sculpture in London's Kew Gardens in 2003. Dr. Jencks is the trustee and co-founder (with his late wife Maggie Keswick) and designed the gardens for the unique Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres, a series of buildings and grounds in various cities built with the belief that architecture and form could provide healing and comfort to those battling cancer. This lecture is being co-sponsored by the Vancouver Biennale.