Finally Visited London's Hardest-to-Ticket Hard-Decor Masterpiece 🏰

🏛️ The Cosmic House 🎟️ Tickets are released online every third Friday of the month at 12:00 PM. 💷 Priced at £13, you'll receive a confirmation email after booking. Try to arrive on time. 🪧 Each session is limited to no more than 15 people (estimated). Upon arrival, check in with your reservation name, store your bags, and receive a small informational booklet. After a brief orientation from the staff, you'll watch an introductory film about the architecture in a small screening room. Following that, you have one hour of free exploration time. 🎬 This building was constructed in 1840 and later purchased and redesigned by architectural critic, historian, and designer Charles Jencks and his wife Maggie Keswick from 1978 to 1983. Can you imagine spending five years on a renovation? 🏠 This isn't just a functional and practical home for Charles and Maggie; it's also a theoretical and practical space on Postmodern architecture. The house is filled with staircases, ellipses, and spiral shapes. The ceilings, cornices, staircases, bookshelves, storage units, and doors and windows all feature symbolic images or text, rich with metaphors and symbols that express the architect's understanding of the universe and the world. 🌌 The entire house spans four floors: The ground floor, where you enter, includes a reception hall, screening room, restroom, and an inverted dome-shaped soaking tub. The tub offers a view of the garden outside, but according to Maggie, it was only used once. 🛀 Ascending the central spiral staircase: The G floor features the living room (spring, winter), kitchen (Indian summer), dining room (summer), study, lounge (autumn), and cloakroom. The dining room opens to the garden. 🍽️ The first floor includes the master bedroom, study, bathroom, and a room that remains largely undecorated, now used as an audience reading room. This blank space was Maggie's escape from the symbolism that permeates the rest of the house. 🛀 The second floor houses the children's and nanny's rooms. 👶 The garden is stunning this season, with wisteria in full bloom and a rich variety of plants. Surrounding the garden are 12 gates representing the months of the year. Maggie, a former fashion designer and garden designer who also published a book on Chinese gardens, has incorporated a semi-circular path that feels distinctly Chinese. 🌸 The entire house exudes the architect's strong desire to express himself. It feels as if every door, window, and piece of furniture wants to pull you in for a chat. It's essentially a companion "read" to the author's academic book, *The Language of Postmodern Architecture*—a building you can read. 📚 So, I can really empathize with the lady of the house, wanting a blank space. Life and profession are so intertwined, which is both a blessing and perhaps a bit of a hassle. 😊 #London