Star turn

t’s more than 35 years since Charles Jencks – the critic credited with the briefly shocking idea that modern architecture was dead, and then with popularising postmodernism – first opened the door of his newly completed home and ushered me into the lobby. Except that it wasn’t a lobby. It was a Cosmic Oval, a space which would, he said, introduce me to all the themes he had explored in the design of his house in London’s Holland Park. For the next two hours he proceeded to explain them to me in head-spinning detail. He had three closely typed A4 sheets full of notes in his hand to prompt him. He checked them from time to time,