Dust jacket notes: "Everyone to some extent designs their own house; everyone needs to personalise the environment around them. Yet few people have succeeded as thoroughly as the critic and architect Charles Jencks in his Thematic House. Using as his basis an 1840s London town house, Jencks has created a total environment based on a symbolic programme accessible to all - the physical world of the cosmos, planets, sun, moon and seasons - yet with a rigour and attention to detail few could imagine. A former student of literature at Harvard, Jencks has brought to architectural practice a love of the possibilities inherent in literary devices such as metaphor and paradox - the subtle, often veiled means by which authors can communicate their message to the public. This has led him to produce an architecture in which the aesthetics are enhanced by meaningful form and writing. His first steps towards a symbolic architecture, the Garagia Rotunda and Elemental House, are reproduced here. From these early experiments grew the Thematic House - unique in its symbolic programmes which give meaning to nearly every detail. Various rooms within the house were realised with the collaboration of artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and Allen Jones, architects such as Terry Farrell and Michael Graves, and Maggie Keswick Jencks, author of The Chinese Garden, who was also responsible for the garden design. Towards a Symbolic Architecture is a powerful argument in favour of symbolic design. The book opens with a forceful exposition by Jencks of his belief in the importance of a meaningful environment. Jencks then makes a brief journey through the stages of his architectural development before arriving at the Thematic House. Room by room descriptions are profusely illustrated in colour with specially commissioned photographs by Richard Bryant...." Hardcover, 9.5 x 12.3 inches, 248 pages, 300 illustrations in full color, Index. - from Amzon