Understanding the Maggie’s Centres: An Architecture of Care

This book provides designers and students with the first in-depth analysis of the architecture of the world-renowned Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres, conceived by Maggie Keswick Jencks, a terminally ill cancer patient, and her husband Charles Jencks, landscape designer and architectural critic. The book explores the interactions between architecture and social activity in the centres and examines how and why they are so successful -- addressing themes from the brief (Maggie Jencks’ ’Blueprint’), to the manipulation of sensory and atmospheric qualities, to how the surrounding environment provides occupants with a sense of refuge and comfort. The book also includes a comparative review of all 28 Maggie’s Centres, designed by a select list of celebrated architects (including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Richard Rogers, and Sn hetta) and features over 60 pages of building information - an invaluable reference source for designers alongside the main thematic discussion.

The success of the Maggie’s Centres has important global implications for the improvement of the design of care structures and therapeutic environments. The centres have established a flexible design methodology capable of uplifting the quality of life of the people involved. By helping to understand and identify these parameters, this book will provide important insights for all students, scholars, and professionals involved in healthcare architecture, architecture for social care, as well as all those interested in the broad impact of architectural environments on people.

Andrea Placidi is Subject Coordinator for Interior Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, UK and the Research Lead for the Therapeutic Environment research group.

Daria Ricchi holds a PhD from Princeton University and is a Research Fellow in the School of Architecture at Oxford Brookes University, UK.

David Uzzell is Professor Emeritus of Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK and formerly Director of the Environmental Psychology Research Group.