The Universe in the Landscape
Landforms by Charles Jencks

Landforms are a fast-developing art form that enjoy a wide following today, because of their multiple uses and their enveloping beauty. As formal landscapes that often arise from necessity - recycling a coal site for human use or making new use of excess earth - they are a pleasure to walk over and through.



In this collection of his recent work, Charles Jencks explains his particular approach to the landform. Like the prehistoric earthworks of Britain that have been an inspiration, such as Stonehenge, his landforms contain cosmic symbolism, and they draw together sculpture, epigraphy, water, gardens, scrap metal and architecture. They address perennial themes - identity, patterns of nature, death and the power of life - but in a contemporary way, based on the insights of science. So Jencks portrays universal aspects of DNA, the spacetime warp of a black hole, the extraordinary way cells divide and unite and some basic forms of life.



Other designs include sharp comments on recent events: a water garden of war in France critiques the 2003 invasion of Iraq using 'waterpults' and 'hose-guns' among other interactive features; a white garden made from birch trees, flying bones and computer graphics deals with some fatal consequences of modernity. Jencks addresses, with wit and irony, some of the strange possibilities that arise with extra-large landforms. Northumberlandia, perhaps the largest human figure ever made, presents the question of which body parts one can walk on safely, which are dangerous and which need to be suppressed. What became perhaps the heaviest work of art in the world, at 20 million tons, was also the opportunity to transform a large open-cast mine into a dynamic landscape of giant mounds and sculpted lakes.



As in his The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, to which this book is a sequel, Jencks seeks to define a new landscape iconography based on forms and themes that may be eternal, in the sense that they crystallise nature's laws, some of which have been recently discovered. To see a world in a grain of sand was a poetic quest of William Blake and, in a different sense, to find the universe in a ritual landscape was a goal of prehistoric cultures. Jencks allies these spiritual affinities with the view of science that stresses the common patterns that underlie all parts of the cosmos, thus making them like our home planet, and the universe in a landscape.

Walk up the Mound



You first cross a fence, and a threshold of river-washed stones set in an s-curve, and then walk over the phrase 'Festina Lente' cut in aluminium. 'Hurry to go slow' is the admonishment for those entering, as it was in the Renaissance garden. The idea then was to slow visitors down by making them think hard about the ornament and symbolism, Here they have to decode the swirls in the aluminium sheet, the s-curves of the strange attractor underfoot. Also present are signs of the cardinal points, the sun and inner planets (on the man-hole cover) and other symbolic ornament. From here you descend to the steps for seating, or coast down the ramp, and turn left; then mount a gently-rising, thin arm of the mound. This invites you up slowly and branches into several paths. The arm has a slight curve, nothing is ever straight, heightening the flat terraces in their relative movement. The high point, and culmination, is just before the switch back and it cups the view from the Gallery containing the whole site and flat lawn. Here the view opens in all directions, and there's a choice. You can slowly descend on the s-curve, appreciating the water following the path on both sides, or else switch back and descend on a steeper slope to the road. The superiority of this design over the others is the way it gradually discloses the temple front of the Gallery, then the whole building, thus providing a certain expectation and discovery.