Maggie's Momentum

The Maggie's Centres, which provide free practical, emotional and social support to people with cancer and their family and friends in the UK, were founded in 1995 by Maggie Keswick Jencks, the late wife of architect and architectural writer Charles Jencks. To date eighteen of the facilities designed by well known architects have been built on the grounds of National Health Service cancer hospitals.

On 10 June the Maggie's designed by Steven Holl Architects broke ground on a site adjacent to the large courtyard of St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Holl's design is envisioned as "a vessel within a vessel within a vessel." Vertical where other Maggie's are horizontal, the three-story design is made of a branching concrete frame with an inner layer of perforated bamboo and an outer layer of matte white glass with colored glass fragments.

Heatherwick Studio has unveiled its design for a new Maggie's Centre in Leeds at the St. James Institute of Oncology. What will be the largest of the Maggie's facilities when completed, Heatherwick strove to make a space that feels informal and domestic: "We wondered if we could make a building from containers, each holding a piece of garden. The design formed itself as a collection of garden pots defining a building by enclosing a series of spaces between them." In texture and form, the design recalls the Learning Hub that Heatherwick Studio recently completed in Singapore.