A new Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre designed by OMA opened yesterday in Glasgow, Scotland.
The Rotterdam-based Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) designed the new Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre on the grounds of the Gartnaval Royal Infirmary hospital in the West part of Glasgow - a ring to the inside, the building interlocks with its surrounding like a toothed wheel.
Maggie’s is a charity organization that has set up since 15 years cancer caring centers across the World to provide emotional and psychological support to those affected by cancer. These centers are designed according to the charity’s directive that exceptional, conscientious architecture makes people feel better.
OMA employed a sequence of spaces that create an interplay of openness, retreat - an individual and warm environment for people suffering from cancer and their families - in support of the Maggie’s program: The 534 m2 building is set up as a ring of loosely arranged interconnecting spaces containing counseling rooms, sitting rooms, a large multipurpose space, a kitchen, dining room, library and offices.
The concept of fluent spatial sequence at Maggie’s Gartnaval was employed to foster the sense of empathetic community that is central to the Maggie’s philosophy.
The project was led by OMA Partners Rem Koolhaas and Ellen van Loon with Associate-in- charge Richard Hollington. The building’s internal courtyard and surrounding wooded knoll were arranged according to the landscape design by Lily Jencks, the daughter of Maggie’s founder the US-American architect Charles Jenks whose wife Maggie Keswick died of cancer, with HarrisonStevens.
Maggies' is OMA’s first completed work in the UK since the Serpentine Pavilion in 2006. Construction of Maggie’s was completed in under a year. Founding for the project was generated by the sponsorship of the thousands who participated in sponsored Walk the Walk events.
