Maggie's Centres

This guide traces the history of Maggie's cancer treatment centres and takes visitors to see how they have grown up in Britain and elsewhere to become a new type of institution; a paradigm for architecture.

Founded by Maggie Keswick Jencks and Charles Jencks, both landscape designers and architects, each Maggie's Centre is a successful example of "a hybrid of four buildings: it's a non-hospital institute, it's a kind of non-home house, a non-confessional religious refuge and a non-museum art gallery. However, it presents traces of all four typologies, used in a new way" (C.J., 2018).

In addition to the peculiarity of being a hybrid building, the success of the Maggie's Centre project seems to be crucial to the fact that, in order to carry out their work, the architects are provided, from the outset, with the Architectural Brief, where they find described not so much the technical and functional requirements, but rather the emotional and sensory states that the new building, intended for cancer patients and their relatives and friends, will have to guarantee.

The buildings are and should all be of great visual impact due to their sophisticated architectural design, but at the same time be familiar with their domestic and welcoming spaces and should be able to encourage patients to support each other.