19 October/20 October 2019 ★ FT Weekend 7Charles Jencks was the man who wrote
out thedeath certificate f modernism.o
“Modern architecture”, he wrote, “died
in St Louis, Missouri, on July 15, 1972, at
3.32pm (or thereabouts).” He was writ-
ing about the demolition of thePruitt
Igoe housing projects. The projects had
failed and, although the failure was
more about social policy, institution-
alised racism and underfunding than
architecture, Jencks pinned on the
project the end of an era and the begin-
ning of a new age of postmodernism.
Not only did Jencks, who has died
aged 80, identify the moment, he also
exemplified it. His house in London’s
Holland Park, currentlybeing turned
into a museum, is a landmark of post-
modern architecture, a built manifesto
for the embrace of the symbolic and the
decorative modernism had eschewed.
His elaborate landscapesexpressed his
fascination with the workings of the cos-
mos and of contemporary science, and
his writings on everything from design
to cancer via cosmology made waves
and expressed the witty, and often sur-
prising, workings of a brilliant mind.
Charles Jencks was born in Baltimore
in 1939 to Gardner Platt Jencks, a con-
cert pianist and modernist composer,and Ruth DeWitt Pearl. is was a well-H
to-do family who could trace their roots
to the Mayflower and who had been
vastly wealthy, before they lost most of
their fortune in the crash of 1929.
He grew up in Cape Cod in a house he
thought had been recently vacated by
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall,
and which would become a nexus of
artists and oddballs. Max Ernst was
arrested on the grounds while defecat-
ing naked in the nearby woods and,
Jencks claimed, Roberto Matta invented
abstract expressionism at the house in
1942 after filling a candelabra with paint
and spinning it above a canvas.
Jencks went toHarvard to study Eng-
lish literature but became entranced by
architecture, attending the Graduate
School of Design from 1961-65, which
was then headed by Bauhaus founder
Walter Gropius. He was seduced by the
work of Swiss modernist Le Corbusier,
who was then building the Brutalist Car-
penter Centre for the Visual Arts in Har-
vard. Jencks wrote widely on the archi-
tect, redefining him as a more complex
figure than his star status suggested.
By the mid-1970s Jencks, who had
moved to London, was in the vanguard
of a group of architects who hadquestioned the limitations of modern-
ism, (“It had become too big to fail”, he
said, “like the banks”). They embraced
images from the Renaissance to the strip
mall, high, middle, low and no-brow,
blended together in a deliberately
provocative new language of form.
He began rebuilding a white stucco
house in Holland Park into a manifesto
for the new movement. Inspired by John
Soane’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields,
Jencks and his architect friends (includ-
ing Norman Foster and Terry Farrell)
created a layered interior embracing
ideas about mythology, cosmology,
symbolism and science, in which every
piece of furniture was designed as a part
of a complex iconographic programme.
At its best uplifting and at its worst
self-indulgent kitsch, the house resem-
bled Jencks himself: tall, slightly patri-
cian, flamboyant, a little fussy, always
witty and warm. It became a locus of
postmodernist ideas both in its con-
struction and as a venue where the great
architects of the late 20th-century
developed their ideas and honed feuds.
In 1978 Jencks married his second
wife, Maggie Keswick, a student of Chi-
nese landscape traditions and gardens.
She was diagnosed with cancerand,determined to beat it, the couple under-
took a fearsome round of reading,
research and consultation. Struck by
the grim surroundings of the hospitals
they spent so much time in, they
resolved to build more humane support
centres for people with cancer. That led
to the creation of the first Maggie’s cen-
tre in Edinburgh. Jencks’s involvement
was manifested in the extraordinary
architecture. Hisfriends were called
upon to design unique buildings dedi-
cated to non-clinical care, a network
which now spans the UK to Hong Kong.
Jencks launched a second career as a
landscape architect. With epic designs
such as theGarden of Cosmic Specula-
tion t the family home in Portrack, thea
Crawick Multiverse nda Jupiter Artland
(all in Scotland), he used land to
expound ideasabout the cosmos, chaos
theory and subatomic physics, creating
hills, cascades and sculptural swellings.
In 2006 he married Louisa Lane Fox,
who kept him going through the long
years of his own bouts of cancer.
Jencks remained, until the end, an
urgent voice for the capacity of architec-
ture not only to be given meaning but
also to give meaning back to life.
Edwin HeathcoteObituary
A prodigious
polymath who
breathed life
into buildings
Charles Jencks
Architect, cultural theorist and historian
1939-The house resembled
the man himself: tall,
slightly patrician,
flamboyant, a little fussy,
always witty and warm
Jencks co-founded Maggie’s centres
for people affected by cancerS
itting at the European Coun-
cil’s round table for the first
and possibly last time on
Thursday night,Boris John-
son’s message o fellow EUt
leaders was a straightforward one: it is
time to move on.
The son of a former Eurocrat recalled
his time at a school for the children of
EU civil servants as he stressed his deep
history with Brussels and emphasised
that Britain would remain a close part-
ner. But the UK, he insisted, simply
didn’t fit in at the EU.
“People were impressed by the ora-
tory,” says one EU diplomat. But the
burning question in the minds of the
other leaders, among them Angela Mer-
kel of Germany and France’s Emmanuel
Macron, was whether, having sealed an
agreement for the UK to quit the EU
after 46 years, Mr Johnson would be
able to convinceMPs to back it.
The prime minister is today facinga
parliamentary battle that will define
Britain’s fate for a generation. Allies
admit theBrexit eal he secured at thed
European Council could beripped up in
the House of Commons ess than 48l
hours after it was agreed. “It’s going to
be fucking close,” says an aide to the
leader.
Mr Johnson has been working franti-
cally to assemble a cross-party coalition
to back the new Brexit deal: he needs
320 MPs to win. Theresa May, his prede-
cessor, tried three times to pull off a sim-
ilar feat and failed, on the last occasion
by 58 votes. He needs to simultaneously
win the backing of hardline Brexiters in
his own party who want a clean break
with the EU,and someLabour MPs who
want to leave but still maintain Europe-
an-style protections for workers.
A defeat would represent a stinging
rebuke for the prime minister fter thea
UK and EU pulled off what in many
ways was an improbable last-minute
deal finalised at Thursday’s EU summit.
If the deal passes, however, Mr John-
son will present himself as the prime
minister who was able to “get Brexit
done”, encouraging large numbers of
disaffected Conservative voters to
return to the fold from Nigel Farage’s
Brexit party. Mr Johnson hopes to press
home his advantage with an election
within weeks: “An election is coming
before the end of the year whatever hap-
pens,” says another ally.Dividing the UK
Even the prospect of such a knife-edge
vote seemed unlikely in the weeks lead-
ing up to the agreement, where the
mood was largely one of gloom. Only
nine days before the deal was reached,
EU-UK relations were in crisis after Mr
Johnson’s team leaked details of a phone
call with Ms Merkel and accused her of
making a deal “essentially impossible,
not just now but ever”.
Instead, the UK and EU struck a pact
that allowed both sides to claim their
red lines had been met, while coming up
with a solution for avoiding a hard bor-
der on the island of Ireland, theissue
that has bedevilled Brexit.
The deal places a hard customs bor-
der between Northern Ireland and
mainland Britain — stoking theire of
Arlene Foster, leader of the Democratic
Unionist party, which rops up Mrp
Johnson’s government — while
ensuring that Northern Ire-
land’s Stormont assembly has a
veto over the arrange-
ments.Instead Mr Johnson
acceded to a concept which
Mrs May last year warned
could “never be acceptable
to any British prime
minister”.ards would take place on entry into
Northern Ireland. To EU negotiators,
this was the equivalent of crossing the
Rubicon, because it meant the UK was
accepting a major divide between Great
Britain and Northern Ireland.
The second factor was a sharp change
in the UK political context, as Mr John-
son’s strategy of ruling out any Brexit
delay and threatening Brussels with a
no-deal exit dissolved. European diplo-
mats point to the passage of the Benn
Act, which compelled the prime minis-
ter to seek a Brexit delay if no deal was
reached by October 19, as essential in
building pressure on Mr Johnson.
The removal of the threat of a no-deal
Brexit gave the EU confidence that it
could play hardball and walk away from
a bad UK offer.
All sides agree that the key break-
through came on October 10, when Mr
Johnson metLeo Varadkar, the Irish
taoiseach, at the Thornton Manor hotel,
a Victorian pile on the Wirral peninsula
in north-west England.
The friendly talks at the supposedly
neutral venue, popular with wedding
parties, were far too convivial for the
tastes of some Northern Ireland Union-
ists. The end result was that Mr Johnson
agreed to erect a customs border in the
Irish Sea. As soon as the UK made that
step, recalls one diplomat, “we were
willing to work something out”.
Mr Varadkar emerged to declare the
talks to be “very positive, very promis-
ing”. He had good reason to be happy.
Mr Johnson's plan removed the threat of
a customs border on the island of Ire-
land, helping to safeguard the peace
process. Although Northern Ireland
would remain legally part of the UK cus-toms territory, trade within the UK
would for the first time be subject to
internal customs checks.
For his part, Mr Varadkar was now
willing to discuss offering the Northern
Irish assemblya democratic consent
mechanism, a critical goal for a UK
prime minister determined to dispel the
notion of an unbreakable “backstop”.
The meeting also clarified that the
negotiations were no longer really about
a backstop at all. The deal that Mrs May
had negotiated on the Irish border was
billed as an insurance policy if no other
solution could be found. Mr Johnson’s
negotiation, however, was about a sys-
tem that both sides understood would
be in place for the long term.
Mr Varadkar’s reaction to the meeting
made an immediate impression in Brus-
sels, and the next day Michel Barnier,
the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator,
requested a mandate from national cap-
itals to radically intensify negotiations.
The EU team was clear that the start-
ing point for talks should be an EU pro-
posal from February 2018 to keep
Northern Ireland in the EU’s internal
market and customs union. The week-
end negotiations were difficult, with Mr
Barnier telling diplomatsthat British
plans for ensuringthe right tariffs were
paid on goods were baffling and risked
leaving the EU market open to fraud.Sealing the deal with Europe
As the UK moved closer to the EU’s
demands, however, negotiators were
able to begin a final sprint to resolve a
series of issues, including the consent
mechanism. Between 20 and 30 UK offi-
cials worked alongside EU counterparts
on the fifth floor of the commission’sBerlaymont building in Brussels. The
moves opened the possibility of a deal,
but also broke the relationship between
Mr Johnson and the DUP, which opposes
any dilution of the union.
The DUP was still deeply anxious
about customs arrangements that
would create a rift in the union. But Mr
Johnson, desperate to conclude a deal,
decided on Thursday morning at
6.30am — just ahead of the Brussels
summit — to go ahead without them.
The prime minister, fortified by a
brunch of bacon and sausage rolls,
headed for Brussels. At the summit that
night, Ms Merkel was “particularly
forensic” in pressing Mr Johnson on how
he planned to succeed where Mrs May
failed in getting his deal ratified, with
the UK prime minister underlining his
certainty that he can take Britain out, as
planned, on October 31.
According to one diplomat, Ms Mer-
kel warned Mr Johnson not to ratchet up
the pressure on MPs by claiming the EU
would refuse an extension if the vote
fails. She was saying “Don’t put words in
our mouths”, says the diplomat.
After Mr Johnson left the room, the
other 27 leaders agreed that now was
not the time to discuss how to handle
any potential British request to delay
Brexit further. But one may yet become
necessary if the Commons arithmetic
today fails to stack up for Mr Johnson.
Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime minis-
ter, used a Brussels press briefing to urge
MPs to back the deal, calling it a “beauti-
ful compromise”. “We really made a
square into a circle,” he said. “I would
say to the British House of Commons,
what more do you want?”
Additional reporting by Michael PeelF T B I G R E A D. UK POLITICS
The Brexit deal the prime minister has negotiated with the EU seemed improbable even a few weeks ago.
If Parliament gives its approval today, he will be in a strong position in a general election.
By Sam Fleming, Jim Brunsden, and George Parker
The compromise is far removed from
the Johnson government’s opening offer
in its Brexit talks with Brussels, which
kicked off in late August and for a long
time made little headway.
During the early rounds of talks, EU
officials complained that UK chief nego-
tiator David Frost appeared to lack the
wide-ranging negotiating mandatehis
predecessor, Olly Robbins, had enjoyed
underMrs May. One senior diplomat
even labelled him at the time as a “post-
man” for Mr Johnson, relegated to deliv-
ering UK red lines.
Meanwhile, Steve Barclay, the Brexit
secretary, went on an autumn tour of
European capitals that further dimmed
the optimism of potential allies, as he
spoke menacingly of the damage a no-
deal Brexit would do to their economies.
There was “a lot of disappointment with
the tone”, says the diplomat.
Behind the scenes, however, two
developments changed the European
Commission’s calculations about the
potential for a deal. First, Britain began
inching in the direction that would ulti-
mately see it accept a regulatory and
customs border between Northern Ire-
land and mainland Britain — the key
concession that unlocked the deal.
In early September, Mr Johnson had
already mooted the idea that Northern
Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
could remain one single regulatory
space when it came to food safety
standards, meaning Brexit would put a
border for sanitary and phytosanitary
checks down the Irish Sea.
On October 2, Britain extended the
offer to all goods, conceding that reg-
ulatory checks on whether UK prod-
ucts met EU single market stand-‘We really
made a
square into
a circle.
I would say
to the
British
House of
Commons,
what more
do you
want?’MarkRutte,
NetherlandsPMTime for a deal:
Boris Johnson
aims to get the
latest Brexit
accord passed in
the House of
Commons today.
A breakthrough
on Northern
Ireland secured
in Mr Johnson’s
cordial meeting
with Ireland’s
Leo Varadkar,
below, enabled
talks with
Brussels to
progress
FT montageCan Johnson get Brexit done?
OCTOBER 19 2019 Section:Features Time: 18/10/2019- 18:58 User:alistair.hayes Page Name:BIGPAGE, Part,Page,Edition:USA, 7, 1