Among London’s most coveted tickets, The Cosmic House stands in a league of its own. Last September, I set an alarm, logged in at the exact release time—only to find most dates already gone. Moments later, every slot had vanished, a testament to the house’s magnetic allure.

The house is no ordinary home but a personal cosmos, crafted by its legendary owners, Charles and Maggie Jencks. In the mid-1970s, they transformed this Victorian building into a living experiment. Charles, an influential voice in postmodern architecture, envisioned The Cosmic House as a playful challenge to modernism’s cold uniformity. For him, architecture should brim with life, symbols, and layers of meaning.

Here, every detail speaks: the spiral staircase carved with zodiac signs and metal orbs symbolising the sun, earth, and moon; the seasonal rooms upstairs, where myth and humour meet. Spring, for example, features a sundial nook draped in heavy curtains—a wry nod to London’s perpetual grey.

Maggie’s love for Chinese art breathes through every corner, from Xu Beihong’s magpies to a hanging Zhong Kui figure. Walking through The Cosmic House feels like an invitation to lose oneself in its stories, symbols, and joyful mysteries—a space where architecture becomes poetry, and each room pulses with life.