An architect’s proposal to turn his home into a museum has angered neighbours, one of whom fears “coach-loads” of visitors will descend on their street.
Charles Jencks, 78, the co-founder of Maggie’s Centres, which support cancer patients, wants to give 90-minute tours to visitors to his £5.5 million villa in Holland Park. It houses his archive, including original plans by Norman Foster, Richard Rogers and Dame Zaha Hadid.
Mr Jencks, a Harvard graduate central to the post-modernist architecture movement, set up Maggie’s in the Nineties with his wife Maggie Keswick-Jencks, prior to her death from the disease.
He believes the transformation of his home would provide a “significant cultural benefit” to London. A planning application submitted to Kensington and Chelsea council states that he “has considered the option of handing over the archives to a university but has decided to retain [them]”.
But some neighbours close to Mr Jencks’ house in Lansdowne Walk are fighting the plans for it to open between 9.30am and 5pm for visits by appointment. Sixteen objections have been lodged by residents.
One, Deborah Marks, said: “I can’t imagine anything worse than coachloads of people arriving. Perhaps they should consider donating their special artefacts to a public museum?”
However Lord Foster, 82, backed the bid, saying it would be a “national loss” if the collection, which includes drawings, letters and models by 20 leading architects, was broken up or sent overseas. In a letter of support he said: “It would be a national loss if all of this had to find a home in the Canadian Centre for Architecture as has, so relatively recently, happened to the works of notable architects. I urge you to help keep the archive intact.”
Meanwhile, councillor Daniel Moyland, co-chair of Urban Design London, said the building itself was of architectural significance. He said: “In historical terms [it] is on a par with Sir John Soane’s Museum, both for its contents and for its historical associations. What looks like a Victorian stucco villa on the outside is inside a trove of post-modernist architecture in practice.”
Officers have recommended that the planning committee approve the application on Tuesday. They wrote: “Access to the existing building, by reason of its examples of work from the post-modern movement and importance in 20th-century architecture, would be a significant cultural benefit to the borough and to London as a whole.”
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