We know that buildingscan make us pallid , and that they can also make us healthier . But can architecture make a divergence in how we receive illness ? What about malignant neoplastic disease ? That ’s a more complicated query .
Atan exhibition at the New York School of Interior Designthis month , we get a glimpse of an usual set of malignant neoplastic disease care facilities called Maggie ’s Centres . These buildings bump to be designed by the most renowned architects in the globe , who normally specify their client to major ethnic institutions and wealthy individuals , not charities . For example , one of the most late center to open , in Aberdeen , was designed by the Norwegian architectsSnøhettaand looks more like a nursing home than a infirmary :
Images : Philip Vile .
How did these buildings come to be ? In 1995 , the far-famed architectural historian Charles Jencks ’ wife passed away after a struggle with bosom cancer . Before she died , Maggie Keswick Jencks pass more than a year developing an idea for a web of care center that would give patients access to stress - reducing activities , sustenance groups , information and more . These would n’t be hospitals , precisely , but more like family bases , point of contact lens and living for patients outside of Barbara Ward .
The year after she died , the first Maggie ’s Centre opened in Edinburgh . And nearly 20 year later , there are dozens , each designed by a different renowned architect , many of whom were longtime friends of the Jencks , like Pritzker Prize winner Richard Rogers , who design a Maggie ’s Centre in London :
Photos : Nick Turner .
So how do these construction aim to improve Crab caution ? It ’s nothing complex : All of the center are filled with short , window , and welcoming , internal spaces for meetings and events . According to their architects , the idea is simply to bestow a scrap of dignity to the conflict of being a patient , to wear up the succession of unfertile white - walled corridors and fluorescent lights with a space that looks more like a plate .
Rem Koolhaas and OMA design a Maggie ’s Centre in Glasgow in 2011 — the low - lying building is a ring of small , wood and glass - trace spaces that open out into a big garden :
Maggie ’s Centre Cheltenham , which was designed byMJP Architects , sits five minute off from the existent infirmary but looks more like a lodge , with meeting rooms , fireplaces , a kitchen , a recitation nook , and more :
At the same sentence , Maggie ’s Centre is n’t without its critic . After all , reckon of the contention that homeopathic treatments and other improper approaches to genus Cancer caution stir up . For example , when Frank Gehry unfold a center in Dundee in 2003 , some wondered whether it was over the top .
“ As the idea has taken off , so Jencks has come under blast from both the scientific community of interests , who question the validity of his claims ( or sensitive distortion of them),”wondered the Guardian in 2010 , “ and the purpose residential district , who inquire if Maggie ’s midpoint are n’t inject more computer architecture into small healthcare facilities than they strictly demand . ”
photo : Maggies ’ Centres .
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