Charles Jencks (1939–2019) was a writer, critic, designer, and teacher whose work defined and refined the disparate and wide-reaching ideas behind post-modernism. Having studied in Harvard (BA) and University College London (PhD), Jencks became one of the most prolific and influential critics writing about architecture in the late twentieth century. The Cosmic House (London, 1983), a family home designed in collaboration with his wife Maggie Keswick-Jencks and architect Sir Terry Farrel, is a microcosm of contemporary architectural theory, semiotics, historiography, and cosmic symbolism.

The Cosmic House opened to the public in 2021. As an educational charity sited in the only Grade-I listed Post-Modernist building, it hosts a programme of exhibitions, residencies and salons which cross architecture, science, art, philosophy, poetry and care. These develop from the three areas of Charles’s archive: History of Architecture, Cosmic Landscapes, and Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centres. The Cosmic House is a social space where local and international artists, architects, scholars and bold thinkers connect with each other, and create work that speculates on how we think, feel, relate, recover and seek meaning in the cosmos.