In Kew Gardens, outside the Jodrell Laboratory, and close to the Grass Garden, is the ‘Bootstrap DNA’ sculpture designed by Charles Jencks and fabricated in steel by the blacksmith John Gibson in 2003. It is commemorating the 50 year anniversary of the discovery of DNA’s double helix structure by James Watson and Francis Crick.
It is an appropriate location for the sculpture, next to the Jodrell Laboratory whose research utilises DNA techniques in its contribution to discovering properties of plants which could be useful in medicine including the treatment of cancer.
Charles Jencks is an American ‘landscape sculptor’ who is now a leading figure in British landscape architecture. He has written a lot on modern architecture, including his ‘Modern Movements in Architecture’ book written in 1973 and still a bestseller.
Charles Jencks is known for his ‘land sculptures’ which are inspired by molecular biology and cosmic science. An example of his work ‘Life Mounds’ at Bonnington House, Edinburgh. They are eight man-made hills shapes around ponds and covered in green turf and meant to be a meditation on life and death.
His wife Maggie Jencks was a garden designer, who died from cancer in 1995. Maggie's Centres, a number of cancer care clinics designed by world-famous architects (Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers) were her idea, and is a scheme that has continued in her honour and for which he has designed some of the gardens.
He is currently working on a giant land sculpture of a naked woman, Northumberlandia, fashioned from a soiled landscape caused by past coal mining. Jencks says, it will be "the world's largest human form sculpted into the landscape".
‘Totally cosmic: the Life Mounds of Charles Jencks’ is an excellent article on this intriguing land sculptor.
The swirling forms seen in the ‘Bootstrap DNA’ sculpture in Kew Gardens reoccurs in his later land sculpture work described in his latest book ‘The Universe in the Landscape: Landforms’.
For a full account of his works see the Charles Jencks website
