"If you look at Gothic detailing right down to the bottom of a column or the capital of a column, it's a small version of the whole building; that's why, like dating the backbones of a dinosaur, a good historian can look at a detail of a Gothic building and tell you exactly what the rest of the building was, and infer the whole from the parts."
Charles JencksTiny Panda Quotes
Quotes by Charles Jencks
Charles Jencks (1939–2019) was a pioneering American architect, theorist, and landscape designer renowned for his innovative approach to postmodern architecture and cultural criticism. With a career spanning decades, he played a vital role in shaping architectural discourse, notably through his influential books, including “The Language of Post-Modern Architecture.” Jencks was also instrumental in developing the influential Garden of Cosmic Speculation, a stunning blend of art and nature in Scotland. His legacy endures as a catalyst for dialogue around the meaning and purpose of architecture in contemporary society.
7 quotes found
"Pick up a sunflower and count the florets running into its centre, or count the spiral scales of a pine cone or a pineapple, running from its bottom up its sides to the top, and you will find an extraordinary truth: recurring numbers, ratios and proportions."
Charles Jencks"A placebo is a phony cure that works. This is very hard for the medical profession to get their teeth around because they hate placebos, but scientifically, placebos work in about 30% of cases that are psychogenic diseases."
Charles Jencks
"Modern Architecture died in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at 3.32 p.m. (or thereabouts), when the infamous Pruitt Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite."
Charles Jencks"If you look at any leaf on any tree branch, it's similar to but not exactly a repetition of the previous branch. So the new science of complexity or showing how an architecture can be produced just as quickly, cheaply and efficiently by using computer production methods to get the slight variation, the self-similarity."
Charles Jencks"I do believe architecture, and all art, should be content-driven. It should have something to say beyond the sensational."
Charles Jencks"I'd been to Stourhead and was inspired by the perfect parity between architecture and art; in fact, the architecture is the art. I wrote a piece called 'Not Sculpture Park,' because most of these things become car parks for bought-in sculpture. The artists should be working with the site, not just plonking pieces down."
Charles Jencks