The design and gardens of Maggie's Cancer Centres
The list of architects and landscape designers associated with Maggie’s Centres reads like a Who’s Who of the great and the good of the design world, from architects Norman Foster and Zaha Hadid to landscape designers Dan Pearson and Kim Wilkie. The phenomenal success of this charity is testament to the vision of the late Maggie Keswick Jencks, a writer and garden designer, who believed that design could play an intrinsic role in improving health and well-being. With her husband Charles Jencks, an architectural historian and landscape designer, she conceived the idea of a new kind of cancer-care centre that would transform people’s lives.
Maggie was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1988. She died in 1995 having spent many long hours in impersonal hospital waiting rooms and realising that the clinical environment merely increased the inevitable anxiety, stress and bewilderment that came with a diagnosis. She began to work on a blueprint for a place that would provide a welcoming, calm refuge for cancer patients and their families, a non-institutional centre that would stand alongside the hospital. The centre would encourage self-help and the sharing of information to empower the patient, built around the concept of a central kitchen table space, an informal area where people could sit and share experiences. It would also provide areas where people could be private and contemplative, as well as a garden to appeal to the senses. A year after her death, Maggie’s blueprint became reality with the opening of the first centre in Edinburgh. Twenty-one years on, there are 21 centres with her name to them – an achievement driven by Charles and Laura Lee, Maggie’s former oncology nurse who is now chief executive of the charity.
Each of the 21 centres has its own spirit and identity. Alongside the more overt requirement for the buildings to be homely and welcoming, creative risk is encouraged in the design process. ‘When people first come in, shattered having just been diagnosed, they’ve lost their sense of strength and identity, and all they want is to be embraced and feel safe,’ says Charles. ‘These buildings are about being welcomed, about shelter, but they are also about the excitement of design. There is a lot about these buildings that is exciting, risky and new, and subliminally this inspires people. It provides a sort of energy.’
Visiting Maggie’s West London at Charing Cross Hospital, this energy is immediately apparent. Designed by Lord Rogers of Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners in 2008, the building is painted a deep, vibrant orange, joyful and uplifting next to the Brutalist hospital building in the shadow of which it sits.
He talks about the project with affection; in contrast to the huge-scale projects like airport terminals that he is known for, this is one of his smallest projects. He describes it as ‘an optimistic and colourful haven’. A cantilevered roof floats above the walls, allowing light to flood into the building. Inside, an airy central space for the kitchen table leads off into smaller areas, a series of boxed spaces and courtyards reminiscent of a Chinese house and garden. ‘Maggie wrote a book about Chinese gardens and this building is inspired by that book,’ says Charles. ‘It’s all about little pocket views and framed vistas out into the garden.’
Gardens are integral to all the Maggie’s Centres, acting as thresholds or transition spaces that lead people away from the hospital into a different, sheltered realm. The gardens are also seen in a therapeutic context, enabling patients and visitors to connect with nature and the seasons, undoubtedly beneficial to both mind and spirit. ‘People project their grief and suffering onto nature,’ says Charles. ‘Nature reflects the seasons, it is life and death, and that’s why gardens are so important to us.’
At Maggie’s West London, Dan Pearson designed a garden that wraps around the building, with planting that offers interest in all seasons. A sinuous path leads through a small area of abundantly planted woodland underneath existing plane trees, towards a more open area surrounded by white-flowered magnolias, while a stand of pink-stemmed birch shields the building from the busy road.
‘The garden allows people to ruminate before they get to the front door,’ says Dan. ‘Even before you’ve reached the building, you’ve gone on a journey.’ The inner gardens are just as important, planted with architectural plants. Wherever you sit, you can see greenery. It feels a world away from the adjacent multi-storey Charing Cross Hospital and the double-decker buses ploughing up and down Fulham Palace Road.
In some centres, the gardens are used for horticultural therapy. This one is lucky enough to have a regular gardener who comes once a week. Of course, gardens cannot be maintained sporadically like a building: they need to be kept in check all year round, putting constant fundraising pressure on the charity. But with garden designers like Piet Oudolf and Arne Maynard on
the list for future projects, Maggie’s is clearly committed as deeply to its gardens as to its buildings.
This year, three new Maggie’s Centres will have opened – in Oldham, Forth Valley and London’s Barts Hospital, designed by architect Steven Holl – and nine more are in development. Maggie’s vision has been carried on a wave and her presence is still felt in each centre. ‘She had an inner sense of energy that you sensed as soon as she came into the room,’ remembers Laura. ‘She was interested in everyone and struck up relationships with people in the hospital waiting room. In a way, her blueprint for the first centre was for them.’ Maggie’s poignant words, written in her essay A View From the Front Line, now published in a booklet available in all the centres, provides a lesson to us all. ‘Above all,’ she wrote, ‘what matters is not to lose the joy of living in the fear of dying.'
Maggie’s Centres: maggiescentres.org. Charles Jencks’ book The Architecture of Hope (Frances Lincoln) is available from Amazon
Andrew Montgomery1/9Dan Pearson designed the garden to cushion the building, with lush woodland planting underneath a stand of old plane trees
Andrew Montgomery2/9The entrance courtyard.
Andrew Montgomery3/9A grove of silver birch screens the building from the road.
Andrew Montgomery4/9A hellebore.
Andrew Montgomery5/9Laura, Dan, Charles and Ivan Harbour, senior partner at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, at the kitchen table
Andrew Montgomery6/9A table in the inner courtyard with an open framed view out into the garden.
Andrew Montgomery7/9Simple ceramic sculptures by Hannah Bennett.
Andrew Montgomery8/9A glass-walled room looks out onto greenery.
Andrew Montgomery9/9Chief executive Laura Lee with co-founder Charles Jencks and garden designer Dan Pearson at Maggie’s West London at Charing Cross Hospital.
