Architecture's brilliant and sometimes controversial theorist, pre-eminent intepreter of post-modern architecture, and renowned storyteller considers the importance of the book in the history, design, and construction of buildings.

Charles Jencks is author of the best-selling The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, newly rewritten and retitled in its seventh edition as The New Paradigm in Architecture: The Language of Post-Modernism (Yale University Press, 2002). Translated into 11 languages, this seminal work is the first to define the broad issues of post-modernism, leading to its growth in other fields such as philosophy and the arts.

A designer of buildings, landscapes, furniture, and sculpture, Jencks has written numerous books on the theory and history of architecture, including The Architecture of the Jumping Universe, A Polemic: How Complexity Science is Changing Architecture and Culture, and has lectured at dozens of universities and various museums around the world. He also has written and appeared in many television films and documentaries. As a practitioner, he is noted for his landscape projects with his wife, the late Maggie Keswick, including the book, The Chinese Garden.

Jencks received the NARA Gold Medal for Architecture in 1992 and was awarded Gardener of the Year by Country Life in 1998.